Overcoming double positive spillovers: automatic habits and dual environmental cognitions driving pro-environmental behaviors among hotel customers

Promoting customers’ pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is crucial for greening the hotel industry. However, customers often hesitate to adopt resource-saving PEBs in public places like hotels due to a "dual positive externality/spillover" problem–extra positive economic spillovers and increased positive environmental spillovers, compared to conducting such behaviors in private households. This study explores habitual PEBs at home and two distinct environmental cognitions associated with key spillover beneficiaries (nature and hotels) to address this challenge and accelerate customers’ PEBs in hotel settings. The rationale is that customers’ habitual PEBs at home can automatically extend to hotels with insensitivity or low sensitivity to positive spillovers; the two beneficiary-linked environmental cognitions (general environmental awareness associated with nature and occasional corporate environmental responsibility attribution [CERA] linked to hotels) can make customers psychologically internalize the positive spillovers of their PEBs at home and hotels to different degrees by changing psychological boundaries between actors and beneficiaries, and/or enable them to realize the intrinsic psychological rewards or incentives (such as a sense of pride or identification) that serve as compensation for the spillovers. Furthermore, this study proposes that habitual PEBs at home mediate between general environmental awareness and PEBs at hotels by bridging the cognition-behavior gap. Moreover, there is a sequential decrease in the effects of habitual PEBs at home, altruistic CERA, and environmental awareness on PEBs at hotels. Empirical evidence from a survey of Chinese hotel guests supports most hypotheses, offering valuable insights for promoting PEBs in the hotel industry.