Exploring the Moderating Effects of Incidental Emotions on Rewards for Encouraging Hotel Guests’ Towel Reuse Behavior

Promoting sustainable practices to hotel guests, such as towel reuse, can help reduce the hotel industry’s environmental impact and raise awareness about the importance of environmental conservation. However, little is known about how hotel guests’ incidental emotions that arise incidentally (not intentionally induced) influence the effectiveness of rewards in promoting sustainable behavior. This study adopts the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF) to examine the interaction effect of incidental emotions (hope vs. fear) and reward certainty on tourists’ pro-environmental behaviors. The study employs a 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design (Incidental emotions: hope vs. fear) × (Reward types: certainty vs uncertainty). The findings show that there are significant interaction effects of incidental emotions and (un)certain monetary rewards on guests’ towel reuse behavior. The research has both theoretical implications for research on reward types and incidental emotions and practical implications for designing and implementing rewards to encourage pro-environmental behaviors.