Services’ labor intensity also can have mixed impacts on sustainability management. For instance, labor intensity increases the employment levels and social impacts, but more staff generally mean greater impacts on the environment (e.g., transportation of employees to the workplace; Young et al. 2009). Automating services may decrease the employment burden on the environment and increase customers’ service participation, but maintaining and developing
automation technology may itself have a relatively high environmental impact (Kassinis and Soteriou 2003). Irrespective of the level of customer involvement, the customer presence affects implementation of sustainable practices (e.g., to increase recycling, tourists have to actively
separate their waste; Cronin et al. 2011)