Faced with a growing sense of urgency to combat climate change, environmental policy is increasingly turning to alternative policy instruments. One method for boosting green behaviour among ...individuals rooted in applied behavioural economics is loss framing - transforming existing messages so that they emphasise the potential negative consequences of an action or inaction on the environment. This paper provides a systematic review of the existing body of evidence on framing effects in pro-environmental decisions. Based on an analysis of 61 studies captured in 47 distinct papers we find that real behaviour has been largely neglected as an outcome variable, with preference in the literature given to the measurement of self-reporting constructs such as attitudes, willingness to pay and behavioural intentions. In support of the loss aversion hypothesis, loss framing was found to be more or equally effective in all studies examining behaviour and intentions, though gain framing was more successful where the choices taken required lower commitment, namely attitudes. We provide an analysis of other loss framing success factors and draw policy- and research implications.
•Loss framing as a green nudge gaining increased traction in policy and research.•Empirical studies on gain- and loss framed environmental messages are reviewed.•Most studies focus on stated preferences at the expense of behaviour.•Loss framing found to be more effective in improving green intentions and behaviour.
Tourist behavior has a critical impact on the environmental sustainability of tourism. The hedonic nature of tourism and lack of an economic incentive make tourist behavior particularly hard to ...change. Making tourists behave more environmentally friendly would have substantial environmental benefits. This is the aim of the present study. Three alternative approaches are tested. The most successful approach—based on sharing monetary savings with guests—leads to a 42 percent change in one specific tourist behavior with negative environmental consequences. This new sharing-based approach significantly outperforms current approaches of increasing awareness of environmental consequences and of tourist ability to make a change. Tourism businesses should consider replacing current appeals with sharing-based schemes.
Changing default settings has proven to be a powerful approach to influencing consumer decisions without denying consumers the possibility of choosing freely. This is only the second study ...investigating the effectiveness of defaults in tourism, and the first testing also the combined effect of default changes and pro-environmental appeals in the context of changing room cleaning defaults in hotels from automatic daily cleaning (with the choice of opting out) to no daily routine cleaning (with the choice of opt-in and requesting a free room clean every day). Results from a quasi-experimental study conducted in a three-star city hotel suggest that the change in defaults significantly reduced room cleaning, with only 32% of room cleans requested on average. Adding a pro-environmental appeal to the change in defaults did not further reduce room cleaning overall, but has an effect on certain segments of hotel guests.
Debates about competitiveness and productivity are practically unexplored with respect to tourism. This article posits a productivity-related measure—total tourism contribution to GDP per employee in ...tourism—in order to examine destination competiveness. Comprehensive results based on a destination competitiveness model are obtained by analyzing tourism-specific and wider economy-based competitiveness factors. These are represented by six destination competitiveness factors measured by 55 indicators for 139 destinations over the period 2007–2011. Study findings demonstrate that tourism-specific factors, such as Tourism Infrastructure and Destination Management, are the major competitiveness drivers in developing countries, while destination competitiveness in developed countries depends on the tourism-specific factor of Destination Management as well as on wider economic conditions such as General Infrastructure, Macro-Environment, and Business Environment. The study offers a novel approach in the operationalization and estimation of a theoretically grounded and empirically validated tourism competitiveness model and discusses the implications for tourism policy.
Appeals to people’s pro-environmental values have been shown to trigger pro-environmental behavior across a range of contexts. The present study tests the potential of such interventions in a hedonic ...context where behavioral change does not generate utilitarian benefits (tourism). Results from a field experiment in a four-star hotel in Slovenia indicate that appeals to people’s pro-environmental values fail to significantly increase tourists’ hotel towel reuse and decrease room electricity consumption, suggesting that interventions in hedonic contexts—such as tourism—may require the use of more tangible benefits in order to change behavior.
Findings from behavioral economics suggest the currently low take-up of voluntary carbon offsets (VCOs) could be increased by changing the way choices are presented. In this article, we lean on ...prospect theory to test the effect of loss framing on air traveler’s VCO behavior and whether this contrasts with attitudes and behavioral intentions. Borrowing from experimental economics, we conduct an incentive-compatible online experiment with a real-effort task. We find that under certain conditions a loss-framed VCO message leads to higher likelihood of offsetting, indicating some presence of loss aversion. The results also reveal a substantial attitude-behavior gap and intention-behavior gap, previously postulated to be particularly strong in the tourism setting but not yet quantified. Importantly, 28% of participants with a negative attitude toward VCOs chose to offset nonetheless, indicating positive attitudes are not a pre-requisite for behavior, as hitherto stipulated. Practical, theoretical, and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.
Destination image formation theory postulates that the way tourists perceive a destination - the destination's image - affects tourists' destination choice. Organic destination image - which develops ...naturally, without an active effort by anyone to shape destination image - is more powerful than destination image induced through marketing because tourists are sceptical about the information conveyed to them through marketing communication channels. Theory predicts that destinations cannot control organic image. We challenge this assumption by hypothesizing that visible environmental initiatives at the destination are positively associated with the organic destination image of being environmentally sustainable. Results indicate that destinations may indeed be able to proactively and deliberately manage their organic image. Tourists who notice pro-environmental initiatives at the destination and pay attention to them perceive the destination as more environmentally friendly and sustainable when they depart. With organic image being a key driver of destination choice, implementation of pro-environmental initiatives becomes a rational marketing investment. This is particularly important given the increasing environmental concern of consumers. The invaluable side effect of redirecting "green marketing dollars" towards "green action dollars" is the improved environmental performance of the destination, which contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The tourism industry must reduce the negative impacts of its operations on the environment to secure its own prosperity into the future and to contribute to humanity's collective aim of more ...sustainable production and consumption. An increasing number of studies in sustainable tourism have attempted to develop and test in the field the effectiveness of behavioural change interventions aimed at enticing tourism stakeholders in behaving more sustainably. These efforts have focused primarily on tourists. Employees have been largely neglected as potential agents of change, despite the substantial environmental consequences of their behaviours. This article pioneers this area of investigation. In a quasi-experimental field study conducted during regular operations of two hotels in Europe, we demonstrate that an equity-theory based behavioural intervention can successfully reduce the number of single-use shampoos dispensed by hotel cleaning staff during daily routine room cleans. Results are of immediate value to managers of tourism businesses - especially those of small and medium sized accommodation providers who do not have the financial means to make major infrastructure changes - by equipping them with a practical measure they can easily deploy to reduce the negative impact on the environment of their operations while also reducing their operating cost.
Using a market basket analysis in tourism studies Vavpotič, Damjan; Knavs, Karmen; Cvelbar, Ljubica Knežević
Tourism economics : the business and finance of tourism and recreation,
12/2021, Letnik:
27, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Understanding tourist visitation patterns is crucial for decision makers in order to create smart tourism industry. A growing body of tourism research uses geo-location data in order to better ...understand tourism demand. In this article, we present a new approach based on a market basket analysis. This approach uses geo-location data shared by tourists on tourism platforms in order to bundle the range of available tourism services and understand which experiences are consumed together. The approach was tested on the case of Vienna, Austria. Based on our analyses, we argue that the proposed approach has the potential for use at the destination level and provides relevant information on tourism demand patterns important for smart tourism decision-making.
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