Abstract
Pro-environmental messages in hospitality often fail to generate the emotional responses that support guests' willingness to act, yet little is known about how guests construct emotional meaning from such messages. Research has established that emotions shape pro-environmental engagement but has not explained how guests construct emotional meaning from messages or why some designs appear persuasive even when physiological reactions are weak. Drawing on the Theory of Constructed Emotion and Emotion-as-Feedback Theory, this study combines physiological measures with projective technique-based interviews to examine how seventy UK hotel guests responded emotionally to three pairs of pro-environmental messages varying in clarity, tone and relational framing. Across the three message pairs, physiological measures showed limited differentiation, while projective interviews revealed consistent and theoretically coherent differences in constructed emotional meaning, ranging from warmth, trust and comfort to reactance, emotional distance and scepticism. This gap between limited physiological signal and rich interpretive differentiation extends the Theory of Constructed Emotion and Emotion-as-Feedback Theory by specifying how message features shape the interpretive pathway connecting exposure to behavioural intention in hospitality pro-environmental communication.