The influence of goal priming on hotel consumers’ pro-environmental behavior: Moderating effects of temporal and social discounting

Abstract

Promoting pro-environmental behavior among hotel consumers is an effective strategy for implementing sustainable management practices. This study developed and validated a conceptual model to examine how goal priming influences consumers' pro-environmental behavior. The proposed hypotheses were tested through four experiments. The findings demonstrate that priming environmental goal significantly enhances pro-environmental behavior within the hotel context. Additionally, this study reveals that affective forecasting functions as an internal psychological mechanism through which consumers evaluate and perceive environmental goal. Priming environmental goal promotes pro-environmental behavior by stimulating consumers' affective forecasting. The findings also indicate that temporal and social discounting moderate the goal priming effect. Specifically, when short-term goal is emphasized, goal priming leads to increased pro-environmental behavior compared to condition without priming. Furthermore, goal priming combined with a near social discount is more likely to induce consumers’ pro-environmental behavior. These findings provide novel insights into effective strategies for promoting pro-environmental behavior.