Guests` behavioral intention at eco-resorts : some empirical evidence from Malaysia

Abstract

Guests’ experience studies and the consequences towards satisfaction and behavioral intention have gained attention by recent scholars since the experience of guests play a significant role in the success of resort businesses. This consequently leads to hospitality businesses focusing on their guests’ needs, wishes and desires to make their service hospitable, thus creating a true experience that leads to loyal guests. Since Malaysia has a remarkable significance of the natural attractions to the tourists, the government highly increased initiatives to continue developing sustainable and balancing eco-tourism and development of resorts. Subsequently, the importance of the service experience equity, perceived greenness and emotions of guests in creating memorable experiences for them to visit the resort again is strictly undeniable and limited considered among researchers especially in Malaysia. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the guests’ behavioral intention at eco-resorts by addressing the mediating role of green consumer values and emotions on the mentioned variables. This study also aims to discover the new experience and phenomenon of eco-tourism particularly in eco-resort setting in Malaysia. There is also an urgency to explain the new model pertaining to the antecedents of behavioral intention among the tourists and guests staying at Malaysia’s eco-resorts. The study is quantitative in nature and the selection of respondents is based on purposive sampling. With regards to the aim of this study, the result of the hypotheses is tested using partial least square of structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and several conclusions were achieved. Notably, the outcome of the study supported the underpinning theories which contribute to the remarkable findings to the field of study (i.e., marketing) as well as to the new insight to Malaysian eco-tourism development. Noticeably, the exogenous constructs (i.e., service experience equity, green consumer values and emotions) of this study showed significant influence on the endogenous variable (i.e., behavior intention) both individually and collectively. On the other hand, the mediating role of green consumer values was found to significantly mediate the relationship between service experience equity and behavioral intention among eco-resorts’ guests. On the contrary, the other mediating variable (i.e., emotions) provided an insignificant result which concluded that emotions do not mediate the relationship between service experience equity and behavioral intention of the study. The finding of this study is recommended to enhance the customer equity in staying at eco-resorts and foster the remarkable image of eco-resorts among tourist to visit Malaysia.