Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility: Psychological and Behavioural Approaches (original) (raw)
Related papers
Psychological and behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable mobility
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2013
""""This paper introduces and explores the psychological and social factors that both contribute to and inhibit behaviour change vis-à-vis sustainable (tourist) mobility. It is based on papers presented at the Freiburg 2012 workshop. Specifically, it reviews climate change attitudes and perceptions, the psychological benefits of tourism mobilities, addictive elements of mobility and social norming effects, the attitude-behaviour gap (i.e., cognitive dissonance between understandings of, and responses to, climate change), the psychology of modal shifts, the psychology of travel speed/time, and psychological explanations for the perceived importance of long distance travel. It notes that anthropogenic climate change is an inescapable reality, and that tourism’s share of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions appears set to rise substantially. There is little prospect of technical solutions adequately addressing this problem. The paper concludes that, while a comprehensive understanding of tourist psychology is necessary to inform policy makers, it alone will be insufficient to achieve emission reductions, and bring tourism to a climatically sustainable pathway, if treated in isolation. Radical change in the structures of provision is also necessary. That change may take the form of infrastructure planning, including financial and economic infrastructure (e.g. taxation regimes and emission trading schemes) for sustainable mobility.""""
Journal of Sustainable Tourism
"Three different sets of approaches to understanding behaviour with respect to sustainable tourism mobility and consumption are identified: the utilitarian, social / psychological and the systems of provision/institutional approach. Each of these are based on different sets of assumptions on the factors that affect consumer sustainability behaviour. These assumptions not only affect the selection of policy tools to change behaviours but are also related to different modes of governance. Assumptions with respect to human behaviour and behavioural change and modes of intervention and governance are interrelated and mutually reinforcing and act as policy paradigms. Failure to recognize the importance of social structures in affecting behaviour have created a path dependency in which solutions to sustainable tourism mobility are only accepted within the dominant governance and behavioural paradigm. Other policy options and academic research that identify structures and institutions in systems of provision as a sustainability problem that requires non-market intervention and/or significant system change are regarded as marginal to the policy process or are ignored. It is concluded that all three different ways of approaching consumer behavior are required if a sustainable transition to the socio-technological system of tourism mobility is to be made in a timely manner. Keywords: governance; policy-action gap, social marketing, information deficit, systems of provision, behavioural economics Also to be published in Hall, C.M., Framing behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable tourism mobility: Beyond neoliberalism, ‘nudging’ and ‘green growth’? in Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility: Psychological and Behavioural Approaches, eds. S. Cohen, J. Higham, P. Peeters and S. Gössling, Routledge, London. The paper is a first draft of the chapter and the journal article and is a more detailed development of an earlier version that was presented at the workshop Psychological and Behavioural Approaches to Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility, Freiburg, Germany, July 2012. It was originally entitled Framing behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable tourism mobility: Beyond neoliberalism, ‘nudging’ and ‘green growth’? but one of the reviewers wanted mobility replaced by consumption. Please note that the paper is a first draft only complete with typos, missing references and spelling mistakes. Please see the book and the journal article when published for the authoritative version http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2013.815764#.Uft5T1P7Nko."
Why sustainable tourism must address climate change
This opinion piece examines Weaver’s thesis that sustainable tourism’s current expanding engagement with climate change may not necessarily be conducive to the interests of tourism sustainability. It critically examines and responds to the seven interrelated issues presented by Weaver to support that opinion. This paper dispels some common climate science myths that continue to hamper scientific progress and obfuscate debate over climate change policy responses and specifically refutes recent claims of compromised and inaccurate research findings. It is argued that climate change studies reveal a deficiency in past conceptualizations of sustainable tourism that focused almost exclusively on destination scale issues and highlight the need to properly account for the environmental and social impacts of tourism’s travel phase. Addressing climate change is considered a prerequisite to sustainable development and therefore germane to advancing sustainable tourism research. Tourism is currently considered among the economic sectors least prepared for the risks and opportunities posed by climate change and is only now developing the capacity to advance knowledge necessary to inform business, communities and government about the issues and potential ways forward. Any retreat from engagement with climate change issues by the tourism industry or its researchers would be to their substantial detriment.