Abstract
ABSTRACTRecent research has shown that holiday air travel constitutes a typical value-action gap as many people continue to fly despite their concerns about climate change. However, some people do voluntarily reduce their holiday flights. Little is known so far about the role that values play in this decision. This paper examines this question based on semi-structured interviews with participants in local climate change and energy-saving projects. It finds that people who voluntarily reduce their holiday air travel are more ready than those who continue to fly to accept that their behaviour makes a contribution to climate change; that they feel a moral imperative to act regardless of its effectiveness in mitigating climate change; and that they distance themselves from socially dominant norms related to holiday air travel. This paper argues that these characteristics are connected to values of self-transcendence and self-direction, and that in this way values remain important for understanding and supporting low carbon behaviour.
Highlights
There has been an extensive debate in the literature about the role values play in supporting the adoption and maintenance of environmentally friendly behaviour. Schwartz (1994, p. 21) defines values as principles that are not situation-specific and that guide people’s lives
Since all of the participants were involved in low carbon community projects, they had at least a basic awareness of climate change and air travel’s contribution to climate change
While there is some evidence that self-transcendence/intrinsic values can support “easy” carbonreducing behaviour, previous research has shown that holiday air travel represents a typical value-action gap as it is not associated with concerns about climate change (e.g. Cohen et al, 2013; Hibbert et al, 2013)
Summary
There has been an extensive debate in the literature about the role values play in supporting the adoption and maintenance of environmentally friendly behaviour. Schwartz (1994, p. 21) defines values as principles that are not situation-specific and that guide people’s lives. There has been an extensive debate in the literature about the role values play in supporting the adoption and maintenance of environmentally friendly behaviour. Several scholars have argued that people usually identify with a range of values of which they prioritise some over others Crompton & Kasser, 2010; de Groot & Steg, 2009) and that the prioritisation of values can be context specific (Howes & Gifford, 2009). Much of the literature on values and environmental behaviour refers to this distinction and suggests that self-transcendent values can better support environmentally friendly behaviour than self-enhancing values (de Groot & Steg, 2009; Schultz et al, 2005). Personal air travel has emerged as a clear case of a valueÀaction gap because many people continue to fly despite their concerns about climate change and future generations (Barr, Shaw, Coles, & Prillwitz, 2010; Becken, 2007; Cohen, Higham, & Reis, 2013)
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