Role of social and environmental sustainability in driving consumer brand loyalty of young adults: a case study on five-star hotel brands in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Social sustainability and environmental sustainability are the emerging trends of the sustainability aspect of a corporate setting since it is giving back to the community and the environment. Because of the emotional and selfless aspect of social and environmental sustainability young adults are more attracted to the hospitality companies that maintains sustainable practices and initiatives since they feel they’ve directly or indirectly impacted the society and environment positively. This research is focused on studying the role of social and environmental aspects of sustainability practices performed by star class hotels that can attract young adult consumer base and through that how the hotels drive their brand loyalty. Through this study the Sri Lankan star hotel brands that are yet to initiate any form of sustainability practices can have an idea of how they would be behind on creating brand loyalty in country’s young adults who are the emerging, trendy spenders in the society. Data collection was done through a structured questionnaire survey using a sample of 160 hotel guests who are from five-star hotel brands in Sri Lanka. The Brand Loyalty Scale (BLS) is used to assess the brand loyalty through social and environmental sustainability. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale is used to assess the attitude towards social and environmental sustainability. The results show a significant positive correlation between NEP scores and brand loyalty. That means social and environmental sustainability positively affects the brand loyalty. Results also indicates that 87% of the young adults from the sample has contributed to the above positive correlation where it can be determined that the majority of young adults would stay loyal with the hotel brands that more concerned about society and environment