Socio-cultural Influences and Intentions toward Environmental Sustainability amongst Undergraduate Students: Evidence from China and Thailand

ABSTRACT

The prosperity of the tourism industry is strongly dependent on the well-being of the environment. Awareness toward environmental sustainability manifests and leads to the adoption of the concepts to address environmental challenges. Moreover, tourism education is at the forefront of impacting environmental sustainability by educating tomorrow’s tourism stakeholders. The study utilized a self-administered attitude questionnaire as the data source. 785 responses were included in the analysis to compare factors (knowledge, attitude, perceived behavioral control, and intention) toward environmental sustainability between hospitality and tourism students based on different socio-demographic characteristics. The study revealed that gender, nationality, and year of study had statistically significant relevance to the students’ environmental intentions. The findings are discussed academically and the presented implications are helpful for practitioners and educators alike. Furthermore, the article concludes with recommendations to provide institutions with guidance on how to tackle the outlined issues and increase awareness of environmental sustainability amongst students.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental sustainability
• Thai
• Chinese
• higher education
• tourism

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ms. Li Yue, the Research Assistant of Chengdu University, who helped to develop and distribute the online questionnaire for the data collection in China. Many thanks to the participants for their contributions by sharing their views and experiences through the questionnaire. Moreover, the authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr. Nam Aghaee and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Seppo Karrila for exchanging ideas and rendering assistance to validate the methodological frame of the study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Prince of Songkla University, supported this research project under the Fast Track Data Collection Grant [Contract No. FHT6400003].