Tourists take a holiday from sustainability

A University of Queensland (UQ) study has found that people who have environmentally friendly lifestyles at home often engage in environmentally harmful behaviour when they go on holiday. The research has been published in the journal Annals of Tourism Research.

“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,” said PhD student Emil Juvan, the author of the report.

“Participants did not report changing their behaviour; instead, they offered a wide range of explanations justifying their tourist activities.” Such excuses included denial of consequences, responsibility and control.

“This research shows there is little evidence to suggest that people consider the environmental costs of their holiday, nor do their environmental concerns influence their holiday choices,” said Juvan.

Juvan’s PhD supervisor, Professor Sara Dolnicar, said much of the previous research in sustainable tourism assumed that people could be “trained and re-educated”. Juvan takes “a totally different perspective”, she said, accepting that environmentally friendly behaviour “does not come naturally to people who are investing a lot of time and money to relax and be free of the typical worries they have at home”.

Juvan said the insights gained from his paper could help to develop interventions that will “prevent tourists from using excuses for not making the right choices”. He noted, “An environmentally unsustainable tourism industry is not only harmful to the environment, but also to its own future as it depletes the very resources tourists come to enjoy.”

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