The attitude–behaviour gap in sustainable tourism

Emil Juvan and Sara Dolnicar

Annals of Tourism Research, 2014, vol. 48, issue C, 76-95

Abstract: This study investigates why people who actively engage in environmental protection at home engage in vacation behaviour which has negative environmental consequences, albeit unintentionally. The environmental activists participating in the study were highly aware of the negative environmental consequences of tourism in general, but all displayed an attitude–behaviour gap which made them feel uncomfortable. Participants did not report changing their behaviour; instead, they offered a wide range of explanations justifying their tourist activities. Gaining insight into these explanations contributes to our understanding of why it is so difficult to motivate people to minimize the negative environmental impacts of their vacations, and represents a promising starting point for new interventions to reduce environmentally unsustainable tourism behaviours.

Keywords: Environmentally sustainable tourism; Cognitive dissonance theory; Qualitative research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (87)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738314000668
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:48:y:2014:i:c:p:76-95

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2014.05.012

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().