You’ve probably seen it at a hotel: a small placard asking you to reuse your towels, or a note boasting about solar panels on the roof. But do these messages actually change how you feel about the hotel, or do you scroll past them with a shrug? And if you suspect the claims are just marketing fluff, does the whole effort backfire?
A team of researchers set out to answer those questions, and their findings suggest that the key ingredient is trust. When customers believe a hotel’s climate claims are genuine, they become more emotionally invested in the issue of climate change and more likely to return to that hotel. The work appears in the Journal of Business Research.
The puzzle the researchers wanted to solve
Companies around the globe are rolling out climate-related measures, from energy savings to plastic reduction. Surveys show that roughly 60% of consumers worry about climate change, and many think businesses should play a role in addressing it. Yet skepticism runs deep. Travelers are often exposed to misinformation and are unsure whether a hotel’s eco-claims reflect real commitment or just clever branding.
Valentina Ndou of the University of Salento, along with colleagues Giovanni Pino and Elisabetta Raguseo, wanted to understand the chain of events that connects a company’s climate actions to customer loyalty. Specifically, they focused on something called “climate change engagement,” a term researchers use to describe the state of feeling connected to climate issues on three levels: emotionally (feeling concerned), cognitively (thinking about it and seeking information), and behaviorally (actually doing something about it).
Their central hunch: customers probably won’t engage with climate issues just because a hotel says it cares. They need to believe the hotel actually means it. The researchers drew on Attribution Theory, a framework from psychology that looks at how people decide why someone acts the way they do. When customers attribute a company’s green behavior to genuine values (an “internal” motivation), they tend to respond positively. When they suspect ulterior motives, such as squeezing out profits from green trends, they react less favorably.
Two studies, two angles
The team ran two separate investigations. The first was an online experiment with 378 participants in the United Kingdom recruited through Prolific, a research platform. Participants were asked to imagine they had just stayed at a fictional climate-friendly hotel called K&C. Half of them read that external auditors had found most of the hotel’s green claims to be false. The other half read that the hotel had passed external audits and been certified as one of the most climate-friendly hotels in its category.
Participants then answered questions about how much they trusted the hotel’s actions, how engaged they felt with climate change, and how loyal they’d be to that hotel in the future. Attitudinal loyalty, as the researchers measured it, is a forward-looking commitment to return to a company, not just a record of past visits.
The second study surveyed 404 real US hotel customers about actual stays. Participants identified which sustainable practices their hotels had used (linen reuse topped the list at 70%, followed by recycling and energy saving) and answered questions about their trust, engagement, and loyalty. They also reported how often they personally performed pro-environmental behaviors like buying eco-friendly products or discussing environmental issues with friends.
What the numbers showed
In the experiment, participants who read the trustworthy version rated the hotel’s actions as significantly more credible (a score of 5.82 out of 7, compared with 2.47 for the untrustworthy version). Their loyalty scores were also nearly twice as high.
The analysis revealed a clear sequence: when customers trusted the hotel’s climate claims, they became more engaged with climate change on all three levels (feeling, thinking, and acting). That heightened engagement, in turn, was linked to stronger loyalty. Of the three dimensions, the emotional one carried the most weight. Customers who felt positive, happy, or proud about the hotel’s commitment were the most likely to say they’d return.
The second study confirmed these patterns with real customers and added a twist. Participants who already tended to perform pro-environmental behaviors in their daily lives responded more strongly to trustworthy climate actions. In other words, the trust-to-engagement link was amplified among people who were already environmentally conscious.
A statistical technique called a Johnson-Neyman floodlight analysis showed that the effect on behavioral engagement was significant for essentially all participants, while the effect on cognitive engagement only kicked in once customers hit a certain threshold of environmental consciousness.
What this means for businesses
For hotels and other companies trying to build customer loyalty through sustainability, the research offers some practical takeaways.
First, credibility matters more than the claim itself. Working with third-party certifiers, publishing verifiable data on emissions, and disclosing progress on climate goals can help convince skeptical customers that the commitment is real. Vague promises may do little, or even backfire.
Second, emotional resonance appears to be the strongest path to loyalty. The researchers suggest that climate-friendly hotels might communicate their efforts through stories that make customers feel proud to be part of a collective effort, rather than focusing only on dry facts and figures.
Third, not every customer will respond the same way. People with weaker pro-environmental habits are harder to reach with this strategy. For them, companies may need tailored messaging that explains why climate-friendly behavior matters in the first place.
Caveats worth noting
The researchers themselves flag several limitations. Both samples, while sizable, aren’t fully representative of the broader hotel customer base. Self-reported data on trust and engagement can be shaped by social desirability bias, meaning participants might answer in ways that make them look more environmentally minded than they are. And because the study focused on the hospitality industry, the findings may not translate directly to other sectors.
One wrinkle in the experiment: the high-trust scenario was slightly longer than the low-trust one, which the authors acknowledge as a methodological limitation worth addressing in future work.
Still, the core message holds up across both studies. Climate actions alone aren’t enough to win customer loyalty. Customers have to believe those actions are authentic, and when they do, the payoff can extend beyond the business itself to something larger: a deeper sense of personal connection to the climate issue.
