Fostering Sustainable Travel Behavior: Role of Sustainability Labels and Goal-Directed Behavior Regarding Touristic Services

Elfriede Penz, Eva Hofmann and Barbara Hartl
Additional contact information
Elfriede Penz: Department of Marketing, Institute for International Marketing Management, Vienna University of Business and Economics, Vienna 1020, Austria
Eva Hofmann: Centre for Peace, Trust and Social Relations, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK,
Barbara Hartl: Competence Center for Empirical Research Methods, Vienna University of Business and Economics, Vienna 1020, Austria

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: Individuals around the globe engage in sustainable consumption in their everyday life, e.g., when it comes to individual transportation. Although tourism behavior contributes to global carbon emissions to a considerable extent, consumers’ awareness of sustainability in the tourism industry is still underresearched. Placing eco-labels next to tourist offers on websites might direct consumer’s perception towards more sustainable offers. By employing eye-tracking techniques and surveys, this research aimed at linking information about sustainable tourist offers, perception of eco-labels and subsequent perception and preferences of tourism services. In Study 1, eight existing hotel offers with sustainability certification (four different labels) were selected and their websites presented to 48 participants (four websites each), whose eye movements were tracked. After looking at each website, they rated the overall appearance of the website. Based on the results, in the second study, participants’ (n = 642) awareness of labels, their values and attitudes regarding sustainable behavior were found to influence their preference for certified tour operators. In addition, individuals’ ideas of their perfect holidays were captured to allow a better understanding of their motivation. This research proposes implementing appropriate sustainable labeling in the tourism industry to increase awareness about sustainability among travelers and subsequently increase sustainable travel behavior.

Keywords: eco-labels; awareness; perception; trustworthiness and credibility of labels; eye-tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/1056/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/1056/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:6:p:1056-:d:101856

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().