Sustainable urban tourism: understanding and developing visitor pro-environmental behaviours

Abstract

This paper shifts the debate on sustainable tourism destinations from an emphasis on ecotourism and eco-resorts towards sustainable urban tourism destinations. A quantitative online survey of visitors to Melbourne, Australia, examined tourists’ pro-environmental behaviours in four major categories: recycling; green transport use; sustainable energy/material use (lighting/water usage), and green food consumption. It explores five major antecedents to those categories: habitual behaviour, environmental attitudes, facilities available, a need to take a break from environmental duties, and sense of tourist social responsibility. The paper also examines the poorly understood belief that pro-environmental behaviour weakens when residents become tourists. Existing habits were found to strongly influence all four urban pro-environmental behaviours. Available facilities are the second most important antecedent. Overall, urban tourist pro-environment behaviour drivers differ markedly from those of residents or ecotourists. A range of tourism industry and public sector agency policy recommendations are made, in terms of developing specific, well sited and easy to find/use environmental infrastructure assets such as recycling facilities and public transport, reducing implementation barriers and in formulating an overall pro-environmental image for the destination. The study envisages a new concept, tourist social responsibility, with high relevance to furthering tourism's sustainability.