A study of consumer attitudes and behavioural intentions concerning restaurant sustainability in Scotland.

Abstract

ABSTRACT Purpose-Thisstudy aimsto investigate consumersresiding in Scotland, to ascertain theirattitudes and perceptions towards restaurant sustainability and measure how it affects their behaviour with regardto restaurant attendance and spending. Design/methodology-A quantitative method approach was taken to conduct this study. Online questionnaires were used as a data collection tool, which were successful in gathering consumer demographical data, measuring their knowledge of sustainability and awareness of sustainable restaurants, attitudes toward sustainability implementation within restaurants, most important sustainable restaurant attributes and intentions to return and spend more to dine at sustainable restaurants. Findings-Findingsof the study show that Scottish consumers support sustainability and believe its implementation inrestaurants is important; however participants are not aware of sustainable restaurants in their local area.The findings also show that sustainability attributes do not significantly influence consumer restaurant choice and it can be assumed that consumers expect sustainable practices to be implemented as standard restaurant attributes. The study also found that sustainability positively affects consumer behavioral intentions as participants are morelikely to revisit a sustainable restaurant (over a non-sustainable restaurant) andarewilling to pay slightly more to dine at one. Some variables of participant demographicsare foundto be significant with regard to consumer knowledge, perception of sustainability and consumer revisit intention, but otherwise insignificant. Furthermore, knowledge of sustainability seemsto be importantregarding participant behavioral intentions Research Limitations-Insufficient results were gathered to represent older participants of the studywhich suggests that this needs to be investigated further. Further researchusing qualitativeresearch methods is also required to explain certain attitudes and behaviours of consumers regarding restaurant sustainability. Lastly, this study measuresconsumer behavioural intentions rather than the actual behaviour. While it can be assumed that consumerswill behave according to their stated intentions, the research cannot confirm this would be followed throughin practice.