Green travellers? Exploring the spatial context of sustainable mobility styles

Abstract

In developed nations a growing emphasis is being placed on the promotion of environmental behaviours amongst individuals, or ‘citizen-consumers’, as a means to reduce personal carbon emissions in the light of climate change. Within the UK, focus has tended towards the segmentation of consumers into ‘lifestyle groups’ and the subsequent development of so-called social marketing behaviour change strategies, promoted as a way to encourage environmental behaviours. In the context of travel and tourism research, this approach has been operationalised through the notion of ‘mobility styles’ as a way of understanding the motivations and barriers different groups of consumers face when making pro-environmental travel decisions. However, this paper argues that the issue of climate change presents a major challenge for those attempting to promote behavioural changes using a single ‘mobility styles’ approach because of the ways in which issues such as climate change transcends the spatial and motivational contexts for travel behaviours. Using data gathered as part of a UK–based project on sustainable travel, the paper will demonstrate the potential conflicts that emerge when exploring daily travel behaviour and travel for short-breaks and holidays using a single mobility styles approach. The paper will argue that the discord between daily and holiday travel raises important questions for adopting a single and asptatial mobility styles approach for promoting behaviour change. This in turn highlights the challenges faced by a wider community of both researchers and policy makers in the environmental social sciences who seek to use segmentation as the basis for understanding and promoting behavioural change.