Do employees hold the key to environmental sustainability in tourism businesses? Empirical evidence from a field study

The tourism industry must reduce the negative impacts of its operations on the environment to secure its own prosperity into the future and to contribute to humanity’s collective aim of more sustainable production and consumption. An increasing number of studies in sustainable tourism have attempted to develop and test in the field the effectiveness of behavioural change interventions aimed at enticing tourism stakeholders in behaving more sustainably. These efforts have focused primarily on tourists. Employees have been largely neglected as potential agents of change, despite the substantial environmental consequences of their behaviours. This article pioneers this area of investigation. In a quasi-experimental field study conducted during regular operations of two hotels in Europe, we demonstrate that an equity-theory based behavioural intervention can successfully reduce the number of single-use shampoos dispensed by hotel cleaning staff during daily routine room cleans. Results are of immediate value to managers of tourism businesses–especially those of small and medium sized accommodation providers who do not have the financial means to make major infrastructure changes–by equipping them with a practical measure they can easily deploy to reduce the negative impact on the environment of their operations while also reducing their operating cost.