Analysing Green Meeting Perceptions of Medical Meeting Participants: An Exploratory Research in the Antalya Region of Turkey

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to analyse the effect of green meetings participants’ perceptions on behavioural intention related to green practices in the tourism industry. Finding out the factor structure of green meeting perception by means of EFA and confirming the discovered factor structure by using CFA are among the research goals. In this study, quantitative research methods were applied. For this purpose, a total of 275 questionnaires were obtained. The research sample consisted of medical conference participants in Antalya, Turkey in 2014 (health sector representatives including doctors, practitioners, nurses, representatives of medical firms, and academics). According to the results, participants supported all kinds of conservation measures to save food, water, electricity, and paper. They attached large importance to eco-friendly, sustainable applications and positively viewed eco-friendly material usage. In addition, it can be concluded that medical conference participants have higher perceptions regarding the forming of social awareness and increasing the number of eco-friendly green meetings in the world. Also, it can be stated that participants’ perceptions of green meetings have an important effect on their behavioural intentions towards eco-friendly practices in the meeting sector. The current study showed that a large number of the participants had the intention of attending green meetings but nearly half of them were not willing to pay more for green meetings. On the other hand, the participants were not sure about paying environmental tax on their travels. The present study pointed out that the participants with green meeting experience had more positive perceptions than those who did not. The originality of this paper stems from being one of the few studies in the context of tourism literature to test the effects of green meeting perception on behavioural intention about green practices and being one of leading studies discovering the factor structure of green meeting perception.