Factors of adoption of eco-labelling in hotel industry

The article aims to understand the reasons why hoteliers adopt an eco-label, but also to identify the factors that may call into question this choice in a context where the environmental pressures are multiple and strong. The article analyzes the whole process of adopting an eco-label from the knowledge phase to the confirmation phase a posteriori. By integrating different diffusion, neo-institutional and entrepreneurial approaches, the model makes it possible to identify all the motives, attitudes, norms and mechanisms of adoption and factors that can reverse this choice. Using a non-parametric quantitative methodology on a sample of 182 French hotels, we can explain the probability of adopting an eco-label and reversing its decision. The choice of adoption is explained by attitude towards risk, and ability to enact eco-label, two dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation, but also by mimetic institutional pressure. For institutions that have not yet adopted the certification, the intention to change its choice depends on normative and mimetic pressures, and entrepreneurial characteristics (like risk-taking, fear of bureaucracy). For certificated hotels, the complexity of the certification system is decisive in the choice of abandoning the certification while positive attitude towards environmental logic and pressures of the reference group help maintain the previous adoption.