Moral Effects of Physical Cleansing and Pro-environmental Hotel Choices

Cultivating pro-environmental choices and behaviors is an important concern for tourism research and practice. Informed by recent developments in psychological research on embodied cognition and the moral effects of physical cleansing, we elicit novel insights about the causal relationship between the embodied experience of physical cleansing and pro-environmental travel choices. Across four experiments, we show that when one’s moral self-regard is heightened by the virtue of physical cleansing, it can motivate consumers to engage in pro-environmental travel choices. Importantly, we show that such an effect occurs because, after physical cleansing, consumers experience more expected guilt for not choosing a morally preferred environmentally friendly travel option within the evoked set of travel alternatives. Our study offers a novel way to understand how consumers can be “nudged” to choose pro-environmental travel options beyond fostering positive attitudes toward sustainability per se. Important implications for tourism research and practice are discussed.