Green Restaurants and Perceived Service Quality: Comparison
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The significant innovation in the food and beverage industry, both in terms of businesses and products. Many factors, such as the increase in the number of businesses and variety of products, the effect of new marketing skills, and changes in customer expectations, have also enabled the diversification of businesses. Restaurants may establish a positive green brand image by incorporating sustainable practices into their operations. Within this context, it can be stated that green practices are of great importance for the restaurant industry, because such activities increase both economic and environmental sustainability [3], providing a great competitive advantage in this sector. Thus, restaurant owners can use sustainability to improve the image of their businesses, and increase customer demand by creating differences between their products and those of their main competitors.

  • sustainable gastronomy
  • green restaurant
  • perceived service quality
  • GRSERV
  • green restaurant image

1. Sustainable Gastronomy

Sustainability has been adopted globally as an important principle in the formulation and management of institutional policies regarding global warming and climate change since the publication of the 2005 Kyoto Protocol [18][1]. The increasing consumer desire for healthy and ecologically sustainable products [19][2] means that sustainability has become an important component of practices carried out in all areas of the industry [2,20][3][4]. The World Commission on Environment and Development has published a report highlighting tourism as a problematic sector in terms of over use of resources; the concept of sustainability has since become an issue to be considered in several related sectors [21][5]. One of these sectors is the food and beverage sector. Sustainable gastronomy is defined by Scarpato (2002) [22][6] as “food production activities that support environmentalist practices by providing individuals, their minds and bodies with beneficial nutritional opportunities”.
Chou et al. (2012) [18][1] base environmentalist practices in the tourism and food and beverage sectors around the concept of sustainability. In the literature, sustainable food is defined as food produced by contributing to the sustainable development of ecology, and giving priority to the welfare of animals [23][7]. As for sustainable menus, they include organic foods grown using non-toxic pesticides and fertilizers, and produced without genetic engineering [24][8]. In this regard, it can be expressed that green restaurants that include environmentally friendly goods and services, such as sustainable foods, sustainable diets and sustainable menus, are also considered to be sustainable [25][9].

2. Green Restaurants

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability trends are driving many businesses to implement green marketing methods, such as developing goods and services to fulfill the needs of environmentally concerned consumers [26][10]. Environmental problems that arise with industrialization in developed and developing countries require that management professionals in many sectors adopt green practices that will cause the least harm to the environment, and practice the most appropriate strategic methods accordingly. In this context, green practices have become significant components of sustainability and profitability for restaurants, as the service industries are considered to be among the highest energy users [2][3].
Since 1990, the American Green Restaurant Association (GRA), by providing a certification for green restaurants, has promoted the implementation of green practices in restaurants [27][11]. These applications can be classed in the following dimensions: reuse and recycle applications, sustainability in food, energy efficient practices, buying green products, prevention of pollution, environment conservation, environmental health, using green goods, and designing buildings as green. According to Gilg et al. (2005) [28][12], restaurants should also focus on three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) and two Es (energy and efficiency) after implementing green practices. These applications minimize the social and environmental problems generated by the effects of restaurant operations, both directly and indirectly. In this sense, green restaurants have been defined by the industry as “food establishments committed to minimizing negative environmental impacts throughout their operation” [29][13]. However, Jang et al. (2011) [30][14] defined green restaurants as restaurants that prefer green practices, and use local and certified organic products in their menus.

3. Perceived Service Quality

Perceived service quality can be defined as the combination of customers’ evaluations of a business based on a comparison of customers’ requests or expectations with actual service received [31][15]. Therefore, perceived service quality can be defined as a function of the interaction between normative expectations, predictive expectations, and actual service quality [32][16]. Correlatively, restaurant customers’ perception of service quality is shaped as by their dining experiences and expected service evaluations [33][17]. Generally, restaurant customers rate the entire dining experience based on perceived quality [34][18]. Since the operational structures of green restaurants are different from other restaurant types, Chen et al. (2015) [10][19] developed the GRSERV scale. The GRSERV scale consists of the following 28 items and seven dimensions: assurance (three items), food quality (five items), tangible (six items), empathy (three items), reliability (three items), environmental-oriented services (five items), and responsiveness (three items). The seven dimensions used in the GRSERV scale are defined by researchers as follows [10][19]: ‘tangible’, whichcovers energy-saving facilities, appliances, and the building’s landscape architecture in restaurants; ‘reliability’, which refers to the reliable and accurate performance of the promised service in restaurants; ‘responsiveness’, which refers to the high effort required to assist customers in restaurants and to provide fast service; ‘assurance’, a method of food certification that refers to the ability and reliability of employees to communicate knowledge and skills; ‘empathy’, which expresses attentive, sensitive, and personalized relevancy in the restaurant; ’environmental-oriented services’, which covers the applications developed to protect the environment in relation to the services offered in the restaurant, and; ‘food quality’, which includes the design and presentation of the dishes on the menu [10][19]. Findings of different research indicate that customer satisfaction is highly influenced by perceived service quality [35,36,37][20][21][22]. Satisfaction is an important factor affecting customers’ revisit intentions [1][23]. Hussain (2016) [7][24] similarly tested the relationship between service quality, image, value, loyalty, and satisfaction in their research, finding that service quality is an important factor in creating positive behavioral intentions through satisfaction. On the other hand, while customers’ awareness of environmental problems makes them more conscious, the differences that have arisen with climate change in recent times allow customers to recognize more environmentally friendly restaurants, and have a strong perception, positive image, and attitude towards the greenness of the restaurants [1][23]. According to Riva et al. (2022) [15][25], when consumers perceive the food and service in a restaurant to be of high quality, they will want to visit that restaurant again.

4. Green Restaurant Image

Chen (2010) [38][26] defines green image as a set of consumer perceptions of a brand associated with its environmental commitment and concern within the framework of brand equity management. Likewise, green restaurant image consists of mental definitions that customers form in relation to their environmental commitment and concern for a particular restaurant. The brand’s name, as well as its commercials and whether it possesses a green certificate (which can be considered as tangible features of the image), are considered as the determining factors in the formation of green restaurant image [1][23]. Image is an important quality dimension that influences customer perception, as it operates as an indicator of good or bad service in the mind of the customer [39][27]. For example, Lai et al. (2009) [40][28] discovered that improved service quality promotes a positive corporate image, which in turn positively affects behavioral intention. In the context of the service industry, a positive corporate image was discovered to have a considerable beneficial influence on consumers’ behavioral intentions at Taiwan’s quick service restaurants [41][29]. As a result, it is argued in a number of studies [42,43][30][31] that green image has a significant effect on customers’ decision making processes and purchase intentions. However, the green features and practices of the restaurant may not be the only reason affecting customers’ decision making processes of a customer; the restaurant’s service factors, such as food quality, service quality and atmosphere, also have an active role in the decision making process of the customer [1][23]. In this context, the corporate image of a business is also considered as a mediator variable between service quality and revisit intention [44][32]. Moreover, a restaurant’s green image has a positive effect on consumers’ behavioral intentions [45][33]. Customers’ perceptions of green practices in terms of both environmental awareness and food, on the other hand, have a favorable influence on green restaurant image and green behavior intentions [1][23].

5. Revisit Intention

The revisit intention of a restaurant is defined as a customer’s desire or decision to eat at the same restaurant again [46][34]. In this context, defining the underlying factors that affect the customer’s revisit intention is important to understanding the customer’s wishes and needs [8][35]. Robinot and Giannelloni (2010) [47][36] found that green practices are accepted as a “basic practice”, rather than a “plus” practice, by the guests. The research findings indicated that green practices contribute little to the increase in satisfaction when perceived positively by the guests; however, negative perceptions of these practices may result in serious dissatisfaction, which reduce the customer’s incentive to revisit. The findings proposed by the study of Szuchnicki (2009) [8][35], on the other hand, show that customers expect certain environmentally friendly service practices when it comes to the ‘dining experience’. In this sense, within the scope of the research, it has been determined that the presence of environmentally friendly practices in restaurants positively influence customers’ revisit intention.

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