A holistic model of tourists’ pro-sustainability shopping consumption : the role of tourist heterogeneity

Abstract

Sustainability is becoming a vital theme in the development of tourism-related industries and have been notably investigated in the aviation and accommodation industries, but, sustainability in the context of the tourism shopping industry, which generates a great proportion of the tourism and travel sectors' contribution to gross domestic product, has been rarely studied. Using discrete choice modelling, this study holistically models the impact of tourist heterogeneity on tourist shoppers' preference towards different sustainability features and estimates their attribute-specific willingness to pay under a three-pillar framework. Tourists' heterogeneity underlying their sustainability-related behavioural tendency and socio-demographic profiles are depicted by market segmentation and its socio-demographic determinants, respectively. Segment-specific behaviour, sustainability willingness to pay and socio-demographic profiles are then presented to provide managerial implications in a more comprehensive manner.