Influences Of Hotel Green Behavior On Brand Equity: An Empirical Study Based On The Legitimacy Perspective

In recent years, more and more hotels actively implement green action, because they need to deal with strong environmental regulation pressure from government.They want to improve the economic benefits by reducing the consumption of racecourse and energy.They need to meet the hotel energy saving expectations from the public and informal organizations.Investigating the impact of the implementation of green action from hotel on hotel's financial performance has become a hot spot,but there is little research on the influences of hotel green action on potential market performance—brand equity.There has several studies analyzing the influences of green hotel action on a dimension of brand equity from consumers' perceived personal benefits,but they ignore the role of social cultural and institutions.However,some studies noted that the influences of corporate behavior on consumers also subject to the social cultural and institutions. Therefore,it is necessary to introduce institutional theory to investigate the influences of green hotel action on brand equity.In this study,we treat consumers' perceptions of legitimacy as mediating variable and construct the theoretical model of hotel green action influences on brand equity.We carry out scenario simulation experiment in Changsha and collect235 valid experimental data.We use descriptive statistical analysis, variance analysis and the Bootstrap test to analyze the internal mechanism that green hotel action affects brand equity.We explore the interaction effect of the demographic variables and green hotel action on consumers' perceptions of legitimacy.Results indicate that the hotel green behavior can enhance consumers' perceptions of pragmatic legitimacy, moral legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy.Consumers' perceptions of legitimacy has partial mediation effect in the relationship between the hotel green behavior and the brand equity.Specifically,consumers' perceptions of pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy has a partial mediation effect in the relationship between hotel green behavior and perceived quality, Consumers' perceptions of cognitive legitimacy has no significant mediation effect in the relationship between hotel green behavior and perceived quality.Consumers' perceptions of pragmatic legitimacy, moral legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy has a partial mediation effect in the relationship between hotel green behavior and brand image and brand loyalty. Hotel green behavior and age hasan interaction effect on pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy. There is no significant interaction effect from hotel green behavior and other demographic variable on consumer's legitimacy.