Sustainable Fine Dining: Evidence from Two Studies on Consumer Responses to Michelin Green Star Restaurants

Michelin Green Star restaurants combine sustainability with high-end dining, yet it remains unclear whether motivation to visit and willingness to pay reflect the same psychological process. Across two studies, we examined differentiated consumer responses to this hybrid context and the role of sustainability communication. Study 1 used survey data from 526 participants and structural equation modeling. Visit intention was positively associated with descriptive norms (β = 0.254), perceived behavioral control (β = 0.356), and positive anticipated emotions (β = 0.302). Green consumer orientation, luxury restaurant hedonism, and perceived sustainability were indirectly associated with intention, mainly through positive anticipated emotions. Willingness to pay showed a narrower pattern, being positively associated with perceived behavioral control (β = 0.171) and luxury restaurant hedonism (β = 0.359), whereas sustainability-related distal antecedents showed no significant direct or indirect associations with this outcome. Study 2 experimentally compared practice-based and experience-based messages among 102 participants. The messages did not differ in their average effects, although intention increased overall following exposure. The interaction between message condition and green consumer orientation predicted post-message positive anticipated emotions (b = 0.447), and the index of moderated mediation through positive anticipated emotions was significant (index = 0.200, 95% bootstrap CI [0.069, 0.418]). Overall, motivational readiness and stated monetary allocation appear to reflect partly distinct processes, while the preliminary experimental findings suggest that communication effects depend on the alignment between communication orientation and consumers’ environmental orientation.