Abstract
The understanding of pro-sustainable behavior and its true economic implications is an important subject for tourism destination marketers and policymakers, especially given that limited research has focused on the economic implications of tourist preferences for more sustainable destinations. Following the identification of three different demand segments using the concept of “sustainable intelligence” (level of commitment, attitude, knowledge and/or behavior with regard to sustainability), this study hypothesizes that the tourist segment with high level of “sustainable intelligence” (called “pro-sustainable tourist”) is willing to pay more to visit a more sustainable destination. The main aim of this paper is to use the logistic regression model to estimate the premium price that each segment is willing to pay to visit a sustainable destination. This paper reports the result of a willingness to pay study using data from 1118 respondents visiting the Western Costa del Sol (Andalusia, Spain), a mature sun-and-sand destination that is currently facing several developmental challenges supposedly associated with sustainability. The results obtained from this research study indicate that the tourist segment with high levels of “sustainable intelligence” is willing to pay more to visit a more sustainable tourism destination. However, there is little willingness to pay if the destination’s commitment to sustainability increases the price of the tourism product (26.6% of respondents).
Highlights
Different issues related to the sustainability field, including sustainable consumption, have gained significant institutional, scientific, academic, corporate and social momentum over the past two decades
97.8% of this segment shows their availability to pay more, versus a small number of tourists from the other two segments who have shown willingness to pay an additional charge. This lack of commitment shown by survey respondents in terms of accepting a higher cost of travel to a destination that is making relevant efforts to improve its sustainability is confirmed, as seen in Table 3, by the notion that even the people willing to pay would only pay a very reduced additional amount, which is limited, in general, to 10% of the total amount of the cost of travel
The results obtained from this research support the hypothesis raised at the beginning of this paper: the tourist segment with high levels of “sustainable intelligence” is willing to pay more to visit a more sustainable tourism destination
Summary
Different issues related to the sustainability field, including sustainable consumption, have gained significant institutional, scientific, academic, corporate and social momentum over the past two decades. Even though the idea of sustainable development has been discussed in tourism research for almost a quarter of a century, the inclusion of the tourist in this debate has been delayed and partial. For over a decade, tourist behaviour has been fundamental issue in tourism studies [2]. The subject areas in sustainable tourism research have significantly changed over the 25-year period of analysis and, in particular, sustainable tourist behavior is currently a thriving field of study [3,4], experiencing significant growth since 2008 [5]. In academic discussions, the conceptual basis of the sustainable tourist has been controversial and somewhat bewildering, resulting in different conceptualizations of “sustainable or pro-sustainable tourists”
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