Theorizing event attendees' behavior to increase the demand for sustainable events

Abstract

Efforts to include sustainable elements to produce green events are deemed critical in recent development of the event management field. However, there are challenges to plan and implement an event that depicts the essential elements that could be characterized as a green event. Basically, the idea of an event with sustainable elementsneed to integrate the three most important concerns regarding the environment, economic and social issues in the process of creating the event. The attendees of event must be educated and nurtured on the importance of having a green event. In the education process of the human element, it is fundamental to look at two important aspects of behavior and belief of individuals, their perception and attitude towards the concept of a green event. Therefore, this study used Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in theorizing and developing a new model so as to understand the antecedents that focuses on the behavior of attendees. This model is unique in a sense that it represents the new dimensions of awareness both from the perspective of ecological and environmental which will result in and understanding of the individual behavior and their perception towards sustainable events. As a result of this research, effective strategies could be developed, training and seminars designed to educate the attendees so that this could influence their behavior to positively support events with green credentials. This could also be a contribution to the government in fulfilling the objectiveof the National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) to create more green events using sustainability issues as an attraction in event tourism. The main objective of this study is to identify the attendees’ behavior towards green events to determine the demand for sustainable events. The methodology used is a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings of this research will help to discover extensive event management knowledge with the key result area of application in sustainability and green technology initiatives.