Sociological barriers to developing sustainable discretionary air travel behaviour

Abstract

Encouraging positive public behaviour change has been touted as a pathway for mitigating the climate impacts of air travel. There is, however, growing evidence that two gaps, one between attitudes and behaviour, and the other between practices of "home" and "away", pose significant barriers to changing discretionary air travel behaviour. This article uses both modern sociological theory on tourism as liminoid space, and postmodern theory that views identities as contextual, to provide a deeper understanding of why these gaps occur in the context of tourism spaces. Based on 50 in-depth consumer interviews in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom, our findings confirm that tourism spaces are often subject to lower levels of environmental concern than daily domestic contexts. The majority of participants reduced, suppressed or abandoned their climate concern when in tourism spaces, and rationalised their resulting behavioural contradictions. Only a minority held there was no difference between the environmental sustainability of their practices in domestic situations versus those on holiday. These findings suggest that scope for voluntary positive behaviour change in the air travel context is limited and will not come without stronger intervention, which is a key finding for policy makers seeking reductions in air travel's climate impacts.

Australian climate concern and the ‘attitude–behaviour gap’

“…Ian (43) summarised a widely held view: "(talking about change in travel behaviour) I'd say yes, but my behaviour hasn't probably matched my understanding of what needs to happen". It is evident that the modernist and postmodernist worldviews described by Cohen et al (2013), with behaviour dichotomised between "here" and "there" in the former, and performances of identity fragmented across contexts in the latter, may be implicated in tourism as a dissolute and irresponsible industry. This may in turn offer some explanatory power in addressing the discord between growing consumer climate concern and deeply entrenched discretionary air travel practices (Randles & Mander, 2009).…”

“…Both of these perspectives: one that positions tourism experiences as an escape from the everyday, and the other that views identities as situational, suggest that just because individuals act in a particular way in domestic life, does not mean that those behaviours transfer consistently (or at all) into tourism contexts (Barr et al, 2010;Cohen et al, 2013). Situational (context) dependence has implications for understanding the transferability of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours across differing life contexts (Miller et al, 2010).…”

“…The second view on tourism that Cohen et al (2013) describe, a postmodernist interpretation, represents tourism practices as increasingly blended into the fabric of everyday life (Edensor, 2007;Larsen, 2008). Here, tourism loses its status as an extraordinary activity: the increasing fluidity of contemporary life (Bauman, 2000) contributes to a breakdown in a binary division between tourism and the everyday.…”

“…As such, those who concern themselves with environmental issues in daily life, and may engage in pro-environmental practices in their day-to-day domestic routines, are no more likely to give priority to environmental concerns when engaging in holiday decision-making (Barr, Shaw, Coles and Prillwitz, 2010;Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014). Cohen et al (2013) appraise the 'attitude-behaviour gap' in relation to domestic (home) and tourist (away) behaviours. Their discussion addresses two divergent sociological schools of thought on how tourism is represented in society.…”

“…Framed by the concept of the 'attitude-behaviour gap', and in particular how this gap is understood through representations of tourism experiences as an escape from the everyday, and of understandings of personal identities as contextually dependent (cf. Cohen, Higham & Reis, 2013), it examines consistencies and inconsistencies in climate awareness and environmental behaviours in everyday ('home'/routine) and tourist ('away'/non-routine) contexts, with specific reference to holiday flying practices.…”