Unlocking the Green Customer: A Conditional Process Model of How Image and Reputation Foster Citizenship Behaviors in Tourism

Abstract

Tourism organizations increasingly ask visitors to do more than purchase a service. They invite guests to conserve water, sort waste, respect local ecosystems, help other visitors, provide constructive environmental feedback, recommend responsible providers, and tolerate modest inconveniences associated with greener operations. These acts can be understood as green customer citizenship behaviors: voluntary, extra-role contributions that support the environmental and service goals of a tourism brand. Yet the route from a provider's green positioning to such behavior remains insufficiently specified. This conceptual research article develops a conditional process model in which green tourism brand image shapes green customer citizenship behavior directly and indirectly through green tourism brand reputation, while green self-identity strengthens the reputation-to-behavior link. The model separates image, a relatively immediate set of associations, from reputation, a more cumulative and socially validated judgment of credibility and consistency. Drawing on signaling theory, social exchange theory, and identity-based reasoning, the article argues that image makes an environmental promise visible, reputation makes that promise believable, and green self-identity determines how strongly credible environmental standing is converted into voluntary customer action. Six hypotheses are developed, followed by a transparent empirical protocol based on temporally separated measurement, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and a formal test of moderated mediation. The article also refines the domain of green citizenship behavior in tourism by distinguishing advocacy, feedback, helping, stewardship participation, and constructive tolerance from required compliance and private household behavior. The resulting framework provides a theoretically economical explanation of when green branding becomes shared environmental action rather than favorable perception alone.