Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility

Psychological and Behavioural Approaches

Scott A. Cohen, James E.S. Higham, Gossling Stefan, Paul Peeters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135038304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Voyage

Despite a growing contribution to climate change, tourist and traveller behaviour is currently not acknowledged as an important sector within the development of climate policy. Whilst tourists may be increasingly aware of potential impacts on climate change there is evidence that most are unwilling to modify their actual behaviours. Influencing individual behaviour in tourism and informing effective governance is therefore an essential part of climate change mitigation.

This significant volume is the first to explore the psychological and social factors that may contribute to and inhibit sustainable change in the context of tourist and traveller behaviour. It draws on a range of disciplines to offer a critical review of the psychological understandings and behavioural aspects of climate change and tourism mobilities, in addition to governance and policies based upon psychological, behavioural and social mechanisms. It therefore provides a more informed understanding of how technology, infrastructure and cost distribution can be developed in order to reach stronger mitigation goals whilst ensuring that resistance from consumers for socio-psychological reasons are minimized.

Written by leading academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and regions this ground breaking volume is essential reading for all those interested in the effective governance of tourism's contribution to climate change now and in the future.

1 Why tourism mobility behaviours must change

Scott A. Cohen, James E.S. Higham, Paul Peeters and Stefan Gössling

Introduction

There now exists a general scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is an inescapable reality (IPCC, 2007). The climate science has been subject to, and withstood, “withering scrutiny” (Garnaut, 2008). The consequences of climate change – social, economic, environmental – will be far reaching (Stern, 2007). The critical challenge that must be taken up without delay is to achieve “radical emission reductions” in all sectors of the economy, and across all aspects of society. The climate crisis, which demands the transformation of our lives and societies (Monbiot, 2007), raises difficult questions for consumer-based neoliberal western societies (Harvey, 2011; Stern, 2007). One important but problematic aspect of the required transformation relates to contemporary western mobility (Gössling et al, 2010). In singling out transport, Cuenot (2013, p. 22) of The International Energy Agency suggests that “Transport offers the easiest path for reducing oil dependency in theory: simple readily available solutions promise a 30% to 50% improvement in fuel economy, depending on the country, while reducing carbon emissions by several giga-tonnes of CO₂ each yeaf’. Wheeller (2012, p. 39), however, focusing on tourist transport, unpacks a simple paradox: “All tourism involves travel: all travel involves transport: no form of transport is sustainable: so how on earth can we have sustainable tourism?” While some modes of transport (e.g. human, electrical, solar powered) are more sustainable than others, the sustainability of high volume, high velocity, long distance transportation is clearly coming under increasing scrutiny (Peeters and Dubois, 2010).

The situation is particularly acute in the case of discretionary air travel (Cohen et al, 2011; Gössling et al, 2010). Monbiot (2007) highlights the considerable challenge associated with mitigating aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, given high current and projected growth in demand for air travel, and the absence of significant scope for further technical gains in aircraft efficiency (Scott et al, 2010). In the absence of “game-changing” innovations in transport technology, it is clearly evident that the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Tourism Barometer 2012 forecast of 1.8 billion international travellers by 2030 is incompatible with carbon mitigation. Western governments and the industry have to date been unwilling – or unable – to make meaningful responses to the tourism transport emissions challenge.

The continuing inability to bring aviation into emission trading schemes (ETS) is indicative of this impasse (Duval, 2013). As many other sectors actively respond to the call for radical emissions reduction (Scott, 2011; Scott et al., 2012), tourism could find itself generating up to 40 per cent of global carbon emissions by 2050 (Dubois and Ceron, 2006; Gössling and Peeters, 2007). This failure of response is producing an industry of environmental disregard and neglect, with contemporary tourism that may be considered profligate and dissolute.

It is clearly evident that “technology and management will not be sufficient to achieve even modest absolute emission reductions” (Gössling et al., 2010, p. 119). This, according to Gössling et al. (2010), confirms that social and behavioural change is necessary to achieve climatically sustainable tourism. Indeed the UNWTO concedes that climatically sustainable tourism requires fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). However, reliance upon shifts in behaviour raises its own issues and challenges (Semenza et al., 2008). Despite evidence of growing public awareness of the impacts of air transport on climate change (Hares et al, 2010; Higham and Cohen, 2011) there remains an alarming disconnection between attitudes and (tourist) behaviour (Miller et al, 2010). Thus, an increasingly informed and concerned public, which is beginning to internalise the realities of the climate crisis (Cohen and Higham, 2011), displays few signs of behaviour change (Barr et al, 2010; Higham et al, 2014; McKercher et al, 2010). The efficacy of individual consumers bearing the costs (social, economic) and responsibilities (psychological, behavioural) of a profoundly (environmentally) unsustainable industry is clearly open to question.

From this overall context, the Freiburg 2012 workshop, held in Freiburg im Breisgau in southern Germany (3–5 July, 2012) set out to explore the psychological and social factors that both contribute to and inhibit behaviour change vis-a-vis sustainable (tourist) mobility. The workshop provided an opportunity to advance a rigorous and theoretically informed knowledge base and research agenda for effective policy interventions to address tourism’s contribution to climate change. Such insights are of importance to policy makers, as policy interventions will be less effective if not based on a rigorous understanding of tourist behaviour and psychology. These understandings are needed to negotiate or remove barriers that policy makers may perceive in implementing stronger mitigation measures by signalling how such measures can be made palatable to the public. The psychological and behavioural insights achieved during the workshop informed discussion of government approaches and policy measures that are required to both (a) support the efforts of individuals/consumers to respond to the emission reduction challenge, and (b) conflate the onus of responsibility (and the anxieties of consumption fuelled climate change) from the level of the individual, to the collective levels of government, industry and economy.

The chapters in this edited book arise from the presentations at the Freiburg 2012 workshop, which explored psychological and behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable tourism mobility. In addition to this volume, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism published in 2013 (vol. 21, issue 7) a collection of peer reviewed papers from the workshop. This book includes the papers from this journal special issue (see Acknowledgements), as well as a number of additional contributions. Our intention here is to provide critical insights into psychological and behavioural approaches to understanding (un) sustainable mobility and, in doing so, to inform policy measures that may be required to achieve emission mitigation. We consequently now turn back to the question of why tourism mobility behaviours must change, addressing the issue from a technical perspective, before introducing further the structure and content of this edited book.

Why behaviour must change – no technical solution!

The critical question is whether tourism is able to mitigate its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a way that supports political consensus to avoid dangerous climate change, i.e. stabilising temperature rise below 2°C, compared to pre- industrial levels. Evidence currently suggests otherwise, with projections of emissions from tourism to increase by more than 130 per cent over 2005 levels by 2035 (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). Of all elements of tourism, air transport causes up to 75 per cent of the contribution to tourism related climate change (Gössling et al., 2010). Sustainable transportation is now established as the critical issue confronting a global tourism industry that is palpably unsustainable, and aviation lies at the heart of this issue (Gössling et al., 2010). Based on a resolution accepted by all International Air Transport Association (IATA) members (IATA, 2013), aviation envisages to achieve “climate neutral growth” up to 2020 and will “aspire” to continue to do so up to 2050. “Climate neutral” is considered keeping emissions at current levels (IATA, 2013, p. 3).

However, even keeping the current contribution of aviation to carbon emissions equal, means the global impact of aviation on climate change will continue to grow. “Safe” levels of emissions require a reduction of current emissions by at least 3 per cent per year (Parry et al., 2008). Tourism’s current global contribution to climate change ranges between approximately 5 per cent if measured as CO₂ emissions and up to 14 per cent of global GHG emissions if considering the impact of all GHG in a given year (Scott et al., 2010). Tourism-related CO₂ emissions (leisure, business and VFR – visiting friends and relatives) are mainly a result of transport (72 per cent), followed by accommodation (24 per cent) and local tourism activities (4 per cent; Peeters and Dubois, 2010).

Achieving a sustainable path for climate change would require a very significant reduction of emissions by 2050 (as outlined below). While IATA considers an aviation fuel efficiency improvement of 2 per cent per annum, across all 38 years between 2012 and 2050 to be a realistic goal, the industry expects passenger-kilometers volume growth of between 4.7 per cent per year (Airbus, 2012) and 5.0 per cent per year (Boeing, 2012) over the next 20 years. Despite efficiency gains, emissions from aviation will thus continue to grow. Moreover, historically seen, efficiency gains in aviation have fallen, and always remained lower than growth in the sector (Mayor and Tol, 2010; Penner et al., 1999).

Tourism transport will, in all probability, continue to grow strongly both to 2050 and beyond; growth that only in some moderate economic and population growth scenarios may slow down by the end of the twenty-first century (see Chapter 11 this volume). The main cause is an increase of average travel distance as tourism transport increases at a faster pace than the number of trips in tourism (Peeters and Dubois, 2010; UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). IATA (2013) acknowledges a gap between their carbon neutral growth vision and the failure of technology to com...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why tourism mobility behavioursmust change
• Part I Psychological understandings of climate change and tourism mobilities
• Part II Behavioural aspects of climate change and tourism mobilities
• Part III Governance and policies based upon psychological, behavioural and social mechanisms
• Index