Consumer behavior and environmental sustainability in tourism and hospitality: a review of theories, concepts, and latest research

Diverse forms of environmental problems pose a serious threat to the natural environment. Environmental sustainability is the foremost topic in the contemporary tourism and hospitality industry. Environmentally-sustainable consumer behavior is an important aspect of environmental protection, which eventually benefits the society. In order to better understand environmentally-sustainable consumption and promote environmentally responsible consumer behavior, this research provides a sound conceptualization of environmentally-sustainable consumer behavior, and presents a systematic review and perspective on theories (theory of reasoned action, norm activation theory, theory of planned behavior, model of goal-directed behavior, and value-belief-norm theory) established in tourism and environmental psychology. In addition, this study introduces the essential drivers of environmentally-sustainable consumer behavior (green image, pro-environmental behavior in everyday life, environmental knowledge, green product attachment, descriptive social norm, anticipated pride and guilt, environmental corporate social responsibility, perceived effectiveness, connectedness to nature, and green value). Lastly, this paper provides the values of the latest studies on the special issue of environmental sustainability and consumer behavior in tourism and hospitality. This study as an introductory paper along with other articles in this special section help enable a collaboration platform across tourism and hospitality fields in pursuit of universal goals for promoting pro-environmental consumption and environmental sustainability.