From Knowledge and Digital Capability to Sustainable Action: The Mediating Role of Managerial Intention in Hotels’ Sustainable Collaborative Consumption Adoption

Abstract

This study examines how hotel managers’ digital literacy, sustainability knowledge, and environmental values are translated into sustainable collaborative consumption adoption through managerial intention. Drawing primarily on upper echelons theory and behavioral-intention logic, the study analyses a cleaned cross-sectional dataset of 576 hotel owners and managers in Pakistan using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Digital literacy (β = .293, p < .001), sustainability knowledge (β = .205, p < .001), and environmental values (β = .408, p < .001) were positively associated with sustainable collaborative consumption intention. Intention was positively associated with adoption behaviour (β = .375, p < .001). Significant indirect effects were found for digital literacy (β = .110), sustainability knowledge (β = .077), and environmental values (β = .153), while the corresponding direct effects on adoption were non-significant, indicating indirect-only statistical mediation. The findings show that managerial capabilities, knowledge, and environmental commitment become organizationally consequential when converted into an explicit intention to implement collaborative sustainability practices. Hotels and tourism authorities should connect digital training and sustainability education with concrete implementation plans. The cross-sectional, self-reported, single-informant design limits causal inference and may involve common-method and key-informant bias. Longitudinal, multi-source, multilevel, and cross-country studies should test temporal ordering and organizational boundary conditions. The study reframes sustainable collaborative consumption from a predominantly consumer-side phenomenon to a managerial organizational-adoption problem.