Abstract
Individuals around the globe engage in sustainable consumption in their everyday life, e.g., when it comes to individual transportation. Although tourism behavior contributes to global carbon emissions to a considerable extent, consumers’ awareness of sustainability in the tourism industry is still underresearched. Placing eco-labels next to tourist offers on websites might direct consumer’s perception towards more sustainable offers. By employing eye-tracking techniques and surveys, this research aimed at linking information about sustainable tourist offers, perception of eco-labels and subsequent perception and preferences of tourism services. In Study 1, eight existing hotel offers with sustainability certification (four different labels) were selected and their websites presented to 48 participants (four websites each), whose eye movements were tracked. After looking at each website, they rated the overall appearance of the website. Based on the results, in the second study, participants’ (n = 642) awareness of labels, their values and attitudes regarding sustainable behavior were found to influence their preference for certified tour operators. In addition, individuals’ ideas of their perfect holidays were captured to allow a better understanding of their motivation. This research proposes implementing appropriate sustainable labeling in the tourism industry to increase awareness about sustainability among travelers and subsequently increase sustainable travel behavior.
Highlights
According to the World Tourism Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme [1], the tourism industry contributes to 4.6% of global warming and about 5 % of global carbon emissions
To test the concept of goal-directed behavior, we analyze how pro-environmental attitudes, subjective norm, belief to achieve a goal, trustworthiness of labels and certifications and knowledge about eco-labels relates to tourists’ preference to choose a certified tour operator, who represents an important intermediary between supply and demand (RQ3, antecedents of preference for certified tour operator). We explore whether those who find eco-labels trustworthy and who prefer certified tour operators hold a different image of a perfect holiday and whether environmental and sustainable elements are part of this image (RQ4, image of vacation)
While Study 1 comprises a lab experiment using eye-tracking techniques to investigate whether awareness and information search of eco-labels on a website relate to the perception of the website, Study 2 examines related factors of the preference for traveling with a certified tour operator and whether environmental and sustainable elements are part of the image of a perfect holiday using an online questionnaire
Summary
According to the World Tourism Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme [1], the tourism industry contributes to 4.6% of global warming and about 5 % of global carbon emissions. Booking trips and holidays is a typical consumer decision in tourism, yet there are no clear results on whether consumers are willing to change their behavior to help tourism become more sustainable [2,3,4,5]. In this respect, sustainable tourism can be described as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities” ([1], np). There are few regulations of environmental and sustainable practices in the tourism industry and often voluntary approaches guide the industry’s pro-environmental, social and economically sustainable performance [6,7]
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