The Cost of Being Green: Sustainability‐Linked Eco‐Friction, Trade‐Off Tolerance, and Tourist Satisfaction in Island Reviews

ABSTRACT

Sustainability is often assumed to enhance tourism value, yet tourists do not always evaluate green practices positively in lived service encounters. This study examines sustainability‐linked evaluation in island and coastal tourism by distinguishing eco‐delight from eco‐friction, defined as environmentally anchored inconvenience rather than generic dissatisfaction. Using 138,683 Google Maps and TripAdvisor reviews from 10 destinations in Southeast and East Asia, we apply bilingual dictionary‐based text analysis and review‐level econometric modeling. Separate bilingual dictionaries, environmental anchoring rules, manual validation, and broad‐versus‐strict sensitivity analyses are used to reduce construct overlap and make classification uncertainty explicit. In the broad sample, eco‐delight is positively associated with review rating, whereas eco‐friction is negatively associated with it. The negative association of eco‐friction is stronger than the positive association of eco‐delight, indicating sustainability‐specific asymmetric negativity rather than only generic negativity bias. Positive trade‐off tolerance weakens this penalty in the broad specification, but the interaction does not replicate in the much smaller strict eco‐core sample. Accordingly, the text‐derived variables are interpreted as imperfect indicators of sustainability‐linked discourse rather than as latent psychological measures. The study reframes sustainable tourism experience as a trade‐off structure rather than a uniformly positive green premium.