Sustainability Signaling in Hospitality: An S-O-R Model of Green Practices, Green Image, and Guest Advocacy

This study explains how green hotel sustainability translates into choice, advocacy, and monetization in an emerging market. Using the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, we model perceived green practices as the stimulus, green image as the organism state, and stay intention, word-of-mouth (WOM), and willingness to pay a premium as responses. Survey data from 300 green hotel guests in Indonesia were analyzed using PLS-SEM. Perceived green practices strongly enhance green image, and green image increases stay intention and WOM. However, green image does not directly increase willingness to pay a premium. Instead, WOM significantly strengthens both stay intention and premium willingness, indicating that social endorsement is the key conversion mechanism that turns credence-based sustainability meaning into economic sacrifice. This asymmetric pattern clarifies why “green image → premium” effects are mixed in prior research and highlights the role of communicative validation in monetizing green esteem. Practically, hotels should prioritize visible, verifiable practices and design shareable proof points that stimulate WOM.