I’m full when i feel awe: The role of awe in predicting the mindful consumption of tourists in the hotel buffet restaurant context

Abstract

Buffet-style restaurants stimulate tourists to consume food impulsively and leave plate waste. By employing a survey and a qualitative approach, namely the Critical Incident Technique (CIT), this study examines the influence of positive emotions and cognition in encouraging and strengthening sustainable consumption behaviour. Built upon the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this research proposes that tourists’ awe experience in a hotel buffet restaurant promotes a self-transcendence experience that broadens individual thought about the environment and builds self-efficacy leading to mindful consumption to reduce plate waste. The findings confirmed the propositions and also revealed that the indirect relationship between awe experience and mindful consumption through the self-transcendence experience is significantly stronger when the tourists have higher environmental knowledge. This study’s contributions are twofold. First, it sheds new light on how experiential stimuli, such as dining at a buffet, can also induce awe. Second, this research adds nuance to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions literature by demonstrating that the effect of awe on self-transcendence and mindful consumption is stronger when cognition such as environmental knowledge takes place. While the effect of awe on self-efficacy persists regardless the environmental knowledge.