Abstract—Environmental sustainability has become an important public policy and marketing issue due to increasing concerns with the natural environment. As a result, environmental messages and claims have been widely used to produce positive product and corporate images. We investigated the use of web-based objective and subjective environmental statements and promotional claims by means of reviewing the websites of 153 golf resorts worldwide. The results indicate that a variety of environmental statements and/or promotional claims have been used by 71 golf resorts. Ad hoc comparisons based on how such statements and claims are used reveal significant effects on perceptions. Resorts with objective statements or claims seem to enjoy more favorable perceptions than resorts with only subjective statements or claims. Important implications for management and future research directions are provided.

Index Terms—Environmental sustainability, online marketing, promotion claims, survey.

T. Z. Chang is with the Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado 80217 (e-mail: changd@msudenver.edu). 
A. Insch is with University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand (e-mail: andrea.insch@otago.ac.nz).

Cite: Tung-Zong Chang and Andrea Insch, "An Exploratory Study of Online Environmental Statements and Claims in Web-Based Tourism Marketing," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 503-508, 2012.