Abstract
Most practical interventions the tourism industry deploys to make tourists behave in more environmentally sustainable ways when they are at their premises or destination – such as the request to reuse towels to protect the environment – rely on attention and cognitive processing. We propose that focusing instead on habit, as the key construct, will be more effective in achieving behavioural change. This study discusses the – largely neglected – role of habit in our understanding of tourist behaviour and provides initial empirical proof of concept of the explanatory power of habit. Findings suggest that entirely new types of behavioural interventions should be developed, which aim at breaking bad vacation habits through disrupting automaticity, such as reducing plate size to prevent overfilling of plates at the buffets, and re-establishing good habits people enact at home, such as by asking people to treat the hotel the same way they do their own home.
Highlights
Established theories of human behaviour – such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Value Belief Norm Theory (Ajzen, 1985; Stern, 2000) – postulate that people's values and beliefs are key drivers of pro-environmental behaviour
The degree to which people consider the environment in their actions is less apparent in the tourism context (Becken, 2007; Dolnicar & Grün, 2009) with appeals to the environment proving unsuccessful in changing tourist behaviour (Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014)
Despite the wide consensus on the importance of making the tourism industry more environmentally sustainable and the substantial body of research investigating aspects relating to sustainable tourism, no theory currently exists that can validly predict such behaviour
Summary
Established theories of human behaviour – such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Value Belief Norm Theory (Ajzen, 1985; Stern, 2000) – postulate that people's values and beliefs are key drivers of pro-environmental behaviour. In the tourism context, it appears that these theories largely fail to predict pro-environmental behaviour: while some behaviours may change for the better in the tourism context, across all environmentally significant behaviours, the extent to which people engage in them drops substantially from the home to the vacation context (Barr et al, 2010; Barr et al, 2011; Becken, 2007; Dolnicar & Grün, 2009; Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014; Ramchurjee & Suresha, 2015). The degree to which people consider the environment in their actions is less apparent in the tourism context (Becken, 2007; Dolnicar & Grün, 2009) with appeals to the environment proving unsuccessful in changing tourist behaviour (Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call