Which unethical hotel practices cause consumers’ boycotts?

Abstract

This paper presents the examination of an aspect of the negative ethical consumption (boycotting). More specifically the consumers’ intentions to reject (boycott) a hotel due to certain unethical practices have been put under investigation. The Conjoint Analysis has been utilized to formulate distinct types of hotels based on 4 chosen attributes, namely: environmental damage (Yes/No), unethical labour practices (Yes/No), price for a double room for 7 days (400/550/700 Euros), ownership (local entrepreneur / multinational chain). The orthogonal design provided 10 combinations of hotels and the respondents were asked to both rate and rank the relevant cards. The conjoint results revealed that the most important factor of the respondents’ rating is the environmental damage (36.730) followed by the unethical labour practices (30.501), and price (24.864), while the less important factor is ownership (7.905). The rating results indicated that the less attractive was the Hotel D (Mean = 1.18), which at the price of 700 Euros, belongs to a local entrepreneur and has been accused of environmental damages and unethical labour practices. It was followed by the Hotel J (Mean=1.50), which at the price of 550 Euros, belongs to a multinational chain and has also been accused of environmental damages and unethical labour practices. As expected, the ranking results indicated that the Hotels J and D were the first to get rejected by the 96.7% and 96.5% of the respondents respectively. The interpretation of these results may provide the necessary, rational basis for the optimum strategy of a green and/or ethical hotel.