ABSTRACT

Consumers are increasingly concerned about sustainable development. This study investigates the
impact of environmentally-framed reviews on review rating scores considering the moderation of the
reviewer’s country’s environmental performance. We use ordered logistic and linear regression
analysis on a dataset of 45k TripAdvisor reviews of green hotels posted by reviewers from 150
countries. The findings reveal that environmentally-framed reviews are associated with higher rating
scores, and the reviewer’s country’s environmental performance positively moderates this impact.
This indicates that the environmental ranking of the reviewer’s country of origin influences
environmentally-framed eWOM about green and non green services.

1. Introduction, literature review, and hypotheses

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated consumers’ environmental concerns and behavioral
changes to the advantage of a more sustainable way of living. Tourism is often associated with
negative environmental impacts, such as the depletion of natural and socio-cultural resources. The
hotel industry is also responsible for environmental degradation, particularly housekeeping, laundry,
and waste disposal practices that can harm the natural environment.

Sustainable tourism is a form of tourism that is economically viable and environmentally sustainable
in the long run; it does not deplete the natural and socio-cultural resources on which it is based to
guarantee that future generations can also benefit. Green hotels are environmentally-friendly
lodging properties that help protect the environment by implementing programs for resource use
reduction, reuse, and recycling.

Recent research reveals that online customer reviews can be useful in advancing our knowledge of
travellers’ perceptions and evaluations of sustainability practices in the hotel industry; overcoming
the issue of social desirability in surveys on green behaviors. Yi et al. (2018) used content analysis to
analyze 737 green reviews from TripAdvisor based on a sample of 10 green hotels in the US. Mariani
and Borghi (2020) use big data text analytics to investigate the depth and presence of environmental
discourse change across platforms in the US and Europe. D’Acunto et al. (2020) used text analytics to
examine 480 k hotel reviews and found out how guests are increasingly discussing the environmental
practices carried out by hotels.

The present study focuses on environmentally-framed reviews, that is, reviews where hotel guests
discuss the hotel’s environmental impactor practices. Previous studies indicate that hotels’
sustainable development practices are good for the environment and affect customer satisfaction.

Based on these studies, we assume that a hotel that applies sustainability principles may be more
likely to motivate customers to share positive word-of-mouth. Corporate Social Responsibility
messages through social media lead to message credibility, which influences word-of-mouth
intentions and corporate reputation. Another study shows customers are less likely to share negative
emotions after a service failure if the company is highly committed to CSR. Research using surveys
has shown that a green brand image is positively associated with green satisfaction and green trust,
which are found to enhance customers’ intention to recommend green hotels to their social circles.

Following this literature, we argue that the consumers who share online reviews discussing the
environmentally-related features of a green hotel will be more likely to leave a positive evaluation
(i.e., rating score) of the same hotel. That is, the implementation of sustainability practices by the
hotel will foster customers’ electronic word-of-mouth of positive valence.

H1. Environmentally-framed reviews positively affect the rating score of green hotel chains.
Further, we introduce a new construct, the reviewers’ environmental culture, which is measured
based on the Environmental Performance Index. Policymakers around the world have treated global
warming differently. Yale University has developed the Environmental Performance Index, which
measures the sustainable performance of worldwide countries based on the priority issues
established in summits on global warming (i.e., Rio Earth Summit) (Hsu et al., 2013). The
Environmental Performance Index ranks worldwide countries’ environmental performance using 40
indicators (e.g., drinking water, tree cover, CO2) across 11 category issues (e.g., air quality,
biodiversity and habitat, marine protected areas), and ranking 180 countries based on their
performance in addressing these environmental challenges. Scandinavian (i.e., Denmark, Sweden,
Finland, Norway) and some European countries (i.e., France, Switzerland, Germany) have been
proactive in implementing environmental regulations, while others lag behind (e.g., Russia, China,
India) (Wendling et al., 2020, p. 2020). The index implies a cultural difference in customers’
education and concerns about sustainability issues, which is determined by one’s country of origin.
For instance, Denmark ranks first because it is considered a front-runner in environmental policy.
Almost 80% of Danish people think climate change is the biggest challenge for humanity in the 21st
century, a much higher percentage than other countries active on environmental regulations
(European Investment Bank, 2021).

According to environmental psychology research, the personality traits most often associated with
pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors (agreeableness and openness) are significantly related to
a nation’s environmental sustainability (Environmental Performance Index) (Hirsh, 2014). Hence, the
Environmental Performance Index is an appropriate indicator of environmental culture differences.

Research has emphasized the role of cultural differences in the attitude toward sustainable tourism
and pro-environmental behaviors (Filimonau et al., 2018). For example, a pioneer study on
restaurants shows that customers from less environmentally-developed countries (India) are less
likely to participate in green practices than customers from countries with higher environmental
regulations (i.e., the US) (Dutta et al., 2008). Research has recently established that cultural
differences/values are important moderators when studying pro-environmental behavior
(Chwialkowska et al., 2020; Filieri et al., 2021; Lin et al., 2022).

However, no study has investigated a country’s environmental performance’s role in eWOM behavior,
specifically in the relationship between environmentally-framed reviews and rating scores. Drawing
upon the literature on the cultural influence on consumer perception of environmental products
(e.g., Filimonau et al., 2018), we argue that consumers will evaluate green hotels differently based on
their country of origin. Specifically, we assume that travelers from countries with high environmental
performance (based on their ranking in the Environmental Performance Index) will rate green hotels
more positively because they fit their cultural values. It is argued that consumers from countries with
high environmental performance will be more aware of environmental products and more educated
and sensitive toward environmental issues. Research shows that consumers living in countries that
have a long tradition of sustainability policies are more likely to take active roles and initiatives with
respect to environmental issues, including boycotting activities (Cova & D’Antone, 2016). Drawing
upon this literature, this study argues that reviewers from countries with higher environmental
performance will be more likely to share positively valenced eWOM about green hotels. Fig. 1 below
represents the hypothesized relationships in this study.

H2. The reviewer country’s environmental performance moderates the relationship between
environmentally-framed reviews and rating scores of green hotel chains, such as the higher the
environmental performance of the reviewer’s country (versus lower), the higher (versus lower) the
review rating score.
Methodology

Environmentally-framed reviews indicate to what extent reviewers discuss sustainability practices in

their reviews (Filieri et al., 2021), which is determined by the number of environmental-related
words (in percentage) out of the total word count for each review. It is a measure extracted from
Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analysis (Pennebaker et al., 2015) by using a specific
dictionary developed for the study of sustainability and CSR (i.e., Pencle & M˘al˘aescu, 2016) and
already employed in hospitality research (D’Acunto et al., 2020; Mariani & Borghi, 2020). Rating
scores range from one (dissatisfaction) to five (satisfaction). Reviewers’ country environmental
performance is measured using the EPI score (Wendling et al., 2020, p. 2020).

2.1. Data collection

Online travel reviews from the six main touristic cities in Europe (i. e., London, Paris, Rome,
Barcelona, Amsterdam, Istanbul) were collected from TripAdvisor with Python. Data covered ten
years (2008–2017). Only reviews written in English where reviewers disclose their country of origin
were included in the dataset. Given the purposes of the study, we focused on green hotel chains
only, which were selected using the Sustainability Yearbook 2022 (S&P, 2022), an index ranking
companies according to their sustainability performance. The dataset consists of 45,314 observations
(Table 1).

2.2. Measures

The key and control variables used in this study with their operationalization are illustrated in Table
2. The independent variable of Environmentally-framed reviews is operationalized in line with extant
literature (D’Acunto et al., 2020; Mariani & Borghi, 2020). The moderating variable, Reviewer Country
Environmental Performance, is operationalized through the Environmental Performance Index (EPI)
(Wendling et al., 2020, p. 2020). We considered the data of reviewers from 150 countries (Appendix
1). The dependent variable is the rating score (Gao et al., 2018).

2.3. Model

Given that the dependent variable is ordinal we test our hypothesis using the ordered logistic
regression (ologit) method. Additionally, we relied on the ordinary least squares (OLS) as a
robustness check. The ordered logit (ologit) model can be described as an extension of the
traditional logit model by allowing for ordinal outcomes, in contrast to purely dichotomous outcomes
that are possible under the traditional logit model. The model is based on the cumulative
probabilities of the response variable. Specifically, the logit of each cumulative probability is assumed
to be a linear function of the covariates with regression coefficients constant across response
categories.

3. Results Regression results are displayed in Table 3. Models 1–2 and 3–4 refer to ologit and OLS
estimations, respectively. Looking at Model 1, the coefficient of ENV_C is positive ad statistically
significant, thus providing evidence that environmentally-framed reviews are positively associated
with the rating score. Hence, hypothesis 1 is supported. The coefficient of EPI_SCORE is also positive
and statistically significant, which suggests that the reviewer country’s environmental culture is
positively related to the rating score. To test the moderating effect of the reviewer’s environmental
culture, we introduce in Model 21 the interaction between ENV_C and EPI_SCORE. The coefficient of
the interaction term is positive and statistically significant at a 1% level (p < 0.01), which supports
hypothesis 2. By looking at the control variables, the reviewer experience and review length are
negatively associated with the rating score. Male reviewers are found to leave lower rating scores
than female reviewers. Business travelers are associated with a lower rating score than leisure
travelers. Non-luxury hotel customers leave lower ratings. For a more straightforward interpretation
of this result, we plot in Fig. 2 the simple slopes for each of the values of EPI_SCORE. While ENV_C is
positively associated with the dependent variable, EPI_SCORE positively moderates the ENV_C-
Rating relationship.1 OLS estimates (Model 3–4) are basically in line with ologit ones, thus
corroborating our results. To confirm the robustness of our model, we have run the regression
analysis (ologit) on a subset of non-green hotel chains (i.e., hotels not ranked in the S&P
Sustainability Yearbook (2022) (model 5 and 6) and on the whole dataset including both, green hotel
chains and non-green hotel chains (model 7 and 8) (see Table 4). While the subset of non-green
hotels consists of 43,730 observations, the full dataset encompassing both green hotel chains and
non-green hotel chains consists of 89,044 observations. Models 1 and 2 refer to the ologit
estimations of green hotel chains displayed in the main analysis (Table 3) and are kept only for
comparative purposes. Both the direct effect of ENV_CL on the rating score and the interaction effect
ENV_CL*EPI_SCORE are found to be consistent across the three scenarios, thus supporting H1
regardless of the setting.

4. Discussion This study shows that environmentally-framed online reviews lead to higher rating
scores. Reviewers discussing environmentally-related features are likely to rate green and non-green
hotels highly. Hence, reviewers are keener to share their feedback through positive word-of-mouth,
which supports previous studies’ findings using customer satisfaction surveys (Prud’homme &
Raymond, 2013; Berezan et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2018). The study contributes to the literature on
the relationship between environmental discourse in customers’ eWOM (online reviews) and
satisfaction (Mariani & Borghi, 2020). Our analysis, including green and non-green hotels, shows that
when hotel customers discuss green environmental practices in their reviews, their evaluation (rating
score) will be higher. This result is important because previous research shows that implementing
sustainability practices in hotels may go unnoticed because hotel customers pay more attention to
service quality dimensions (e.g., room, cleanliness, location), which impact their satisfaction (Robinot
& Giannelloni, 2010). Another recent study pointed out how the consumer adoption of green hotels
is still mainly driven by utilitarian service quality motives such as monetary (e.g., value for money)
and nonmonetary (e.g., convenience, time savings), rather than by biospheric values (Kamboj et al.,
2022). Our study shows that customers who choose and review green (but also non-green) hotels are
likely to discuss green practices and be more satisfied with the hotels that implement them.
Moreover, our study’s findings contrast with Gupta et al. (2019), who reveal that leisure travellers
driven strongly by self-enhancement values view green services as an inconvenience and tend to
ignore them. Our data on green hotels included 34.466 leisure travellers (75.9%) and 10.984 business
travellers (24.1%), and it reveals that business travelers are associated with a lower rating score than
leisure travelers. Second, the study contributes to the literature on the role of culture in shaping
consumer perceptions of sustainable practices in the service interests or personal relationships that
could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.