Measuring environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour

This study reveals substantial variation in estimates of the proportion of tourists behaving in an environmentally sustainable manner. Results indicate that the variation is explained by (1) definitions of environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour including—or not including—intent to protect the environment and (2) the use of either unprompted open-ended or prompted closed questions. The latter are associated with respondent’s tendencies to respond in a socially desirable way, thus artificially inflating the occurrence of environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour by as much as 74 per cent. Unprompted open-ended questions are not susceptible to social desirability bias. Future studies into environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour should measure actual observed behaviour. If this is not possible, unprompted open-ended approaches are recommended.

[1]  Noah J. Goldstein,et al.  A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels , 2008 .

[2]  N. Smith-sebasto,et al.  Designing a likert-type scale to predict environmentally responsible behavior in undergraduate students: A multistep process. , 1995 .

[3]  C. Klöckner.  A comprehensive model of the psychology of environmental behaviour—A meta-analysis , 2013 .

[4]  L. Lebel,et al.  IDENTIFYING TOURISTS WITH SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOUR: A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL TOURISTS TO THAILAND , 2012 .

[5]  Norman Peng,et al.  Green hotel knowledge and tourists’ staying behavior , 2012 .

[6]  S. Pike.  The Use of Repertory Grid Analysis to Elicit Salient Short-Break Holiday Destination Attributes in New Zealand , 2003 .

[7]  C. Kormos,et al.  The validity of self-report measures of proenvironmental behavior: A meta-analytic review , 2014 .

[8]  J. Ockene,et al.  Social desirability bias in dietary self-report may compromise the validity of dietary intake measures. , 1995, International journal of epidemiology.

[9]  P. Stern.  New Environmental Theories: Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior , 2000 .

[10]  S. O'Neill,et al.  Green identity, green living? The role of pro-environmental self-identity in determining consistency across diverse pro-environmental behaviours , 2010 .

[11]  Heesup Han,et al.  Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to green hotel choice: Testing the effect of environmental friendly activities , 2010 .

[12]  Keith G. Debbage,et al.  Post-Fordism and flexibility: the travel industry polyglot , 1997 .

[13]  Robert C. Lewis,et al.  Predicting Hotel Choice , 1985 .

[14]  H. Perkins,et al.  Environmental Values and the So-Called True Ecotourist , 2012 .

[15]  J. N. Goodrich,et al.  The Relationship Between Preferences for and Perceptions of Vacation Destinations: Application of a Choice Model , 1978 .

[16]  D. Lam,et al.  Linking employees' personalities to job loyalty. , 2012 .

[17]  Wan-I Lee,et al.  Environmentally responsible behavior in ecotourism: antecedents and implications. , 2014 .

[18]  Arch G. Woodside,et al.  Personal Values and Travel Decisions , 1986 .

[19]  Mehmet Mehmetoglu.  Factors Influencing the Willingness to Behave Environmentally Friendly at Home and Holiday Settings , 2010 .

[20]  Azar M. Khazian,et al.  Using normative social influence to promote conservation among hotel guests , 2008 .

[21]  M. Conner,et al.  Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior: A Review and Avenues for Further Research , 1998 .

[22]  van de Mortel,et al.  Faking it: Social desirability response bias in self-report research , 2008 .

[23]  J. Mair,et al.  Emerging Green Tourists in Australia: Their Behaviours and Attitudes , 2009 .

[24]  B. Prideaux,et al.  Reading, learning and enacting: interpretation at visitor sites in the Wet Tropics rainforest of Australia , 2010 .

[25]  Sara Dolnicar,et al.  Identifying tourists with smaller environmental footprints , 2010 .

[26]  B. Mckercher,et al.  Are tourism impacts low on personal environmental agendas? , 2011 .

[27]  S. Dolnicar.  Nature-Conserving Tourists: The Need for a Broader Perspective , 2006 .

[28]  S. Dolnicar,et al.  Beyond ecotourism: the environmentally responsible tourist in the general travel experience , 2009 .

[29]  Rob Law,et al.  Achieving voluntary reductions in the carbon footprint of tourism and climate change , 2010 .

[30]  S. Dolnicar,et al.  New horses for old courses: questioning the limitations of sustainable tourism to supply-driven measures and the nature-based context , 2005 .

[31]  Thomas Holtgraves,et al.  Social Desirability and Self-Reports: Testing Models of Socially Desirable Responding , 2004, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[32]  P. Dinan,et al.  Social marketing and sustainable tourism: Is there a match? , 2000 .

[33]  S. Moscovici.  Notes towards a description of Social Representations , 1988 .

[34]  Soocheong Jang,et al.  Travel motivations and destination choice: A study of British outbound market , 2002 .

[35]  T. Lee,et al.  Conceptualizing and measuring environmentally responsible behaviors from the perspective of community-based tourists , 2013 .

[36]  J. Swarbrooke,et al.  Consumer Behaviour in Tourism , 1999 .

[37]  Gareth Shaw,et al.  Knowledge transfer and management in tourism organisations: An emerging research agenda , 2009 .

[38]  Mark Conner,et al.  Distinguishing Perceptions of Control From Self‐Efficacy: Predicting Consumption of a Low‐Fat Diet Using the Theory of Planned Behavior , 1999 .

[39]  Sara Dolnicar,et al.  Which Hotel attributes Matter? A review of previous and a framework for future research , 2003 .

[40]  Stefan Gössling,et al.  Global environmental consequences of tourism , 2002 .

[41]  Seonaidh McDonald,et al.  The researcher role in the attitude-behaviour gap. , 2014 .

[42]  K. Wood,et al.  The good tourist : a worldwide guide for the green traveller , 1992 .

[43]  S. Dolnicar,et al.  The Attitude-Behaviour Gap in Sustainable Tourism , 2014 .

[44]  Mehmet Mehmetoglu.  Predictors of sustainable consumption in a tourism context: a CHAID approach , 2009 .

[45]  Andy Field,et al.  Discovering statistics using SPSS: and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, 3rd Edition , 2009 .

[46]  Mehmet Mehmetoglu.  Accurately Identifying and Comparing Sustainable Tourists, Nature-Based Tourists, and Ecotourists on the Basis of Their Environmental Concerns , 2010 .

[47]  J. Krippendorf.  The holiday makers: Understanding the impact of leisure and travel , 1987 .

[48]  D. Marlowe,et al.  A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. , 1960, Journal of consulting psychology.

[49]  A. Poon.  Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies , 1993 .

[50]  Paul Peeters,et al.  Climate Change and Tourism: Responding to Global Challenges. , 2007 .

[51]  Caroline Howarth,et al.  A social representation is not a quiet thing: exploring the critical potential of social representations theory. , 2006, The British journal of social psychology.

[52]  Davina Stanford.  ‘Exceptional Visitors’: Dimensions of Tourist Responsibility in the Context of New Zealand , 2008 .

[53]  F. Kaiser,et al.  Psychological Restoration in Nature as a Positive Motivation for Ecological Behavior , 2001 .

[54]  R. Fisher.  Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning , 1993 .

[55]  D. Midthune,et al.  Social desirability trait influences on self-reported dietary measures among diverse participants in a multicenter multiple risk factor trial. , 2008, The Journal of nutrition.

[56]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[57]  S. Dolnicar,et al.  Are Green Tourists a Managerially Useful Target Segment? , 2008 .

[58]  A. Woodside,et al.  A General Model Of Traveler Destination Choice , 1989 .

[59]  G. Miller.  Consumerism in Sustainable Tourism: A Survey of UK Consumers , 2003 .

[60]  Yu-Long Chao,et al.  Measuring Responsible Environmental Behavior: Self-Reported and Other-Reported Measures and Their Differences in Testing a Behavioral Model , 2011 .

[61]  Icek Ajzen,et al.  From Intentions to Actions: A Theory of Planned Behavior , 1985 .

[62]  W. Reynolds.  Development of reliable and valid short forms of the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale , 1982 .

[63]  S. Stryker.  Identity Salience and Role Performance: The Relevance of Symbolic Interaction Theory for Family Research , 1968 .

[64]  S. Dolnicar.  Insights into Sustainable Tourists in Austria: A Data-based A Priori Segmentation Approach , 2004 .

[65]  Friedrich Leisch,et al.  Selective marketing for environmentally sustainable tourism , 2008 .