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In times of upheaval and uncertainty justice has come to the fore as a key principle to guide tourism development and policy. Justice is being sought by individuals, groups and societies, as vulner...

Academia is generally carbon intensive. Many academics are highly aeromobile to an extent that is now being framed as a form of ‘climate hypocrisy’. Technological advances are not enough to...

Whale watching around the world has experienced explosive growth, driven largely by environmental marketing that presents it as a green alternative to whaling, leading to widespread questions of su...

Forecast growth in global demand for air travel is incompatible with emissions reduction targets. Scholarly attention is urgently needed to address attitude and behaviour change that supports sector-wide emissions reduction. Informed by the longstanding field of consumer psychology, the innovative approach adopted in this paper is to critically address air travel behaviour change through the application of attitude function theory. An analysis of the literature reveals that current attitudes reflect industry myths, and are further hampered by travellers' knowledge gaps regarding the relationship between aviation and climate change. Five attitude functions are analysed in the context of attitudes to air travel; knowledge, utilitarian, value-expressive, ego-defensive and social adjustive functions. A conceptual framework is presented that integrates attitude structure, attitude function and the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion as an innovative approach to address discretionary air travel and behaviour change at the level of the individual consumer. Utilizing this framework, future research can help develop a critical understanding of the antecedents that shape attitudes. Researchers will be better positioned to create persuasive messages aimed at changing attitudes towards air travel, as arguably the key step towards the illusive goal of significant behaviour change and a shift towards more sustainable tourist mobilities.

Despite increasing attention on air travel’s significant and disproportionate contribution to climate change, meaningful reduction in consumer demand is nowhere in sight. Taking a consumer behaviou...

“Sustainability” has endured as an important concept for tourism scholars, and volumes have been written about how to achieve this holy grail of the tourism industry. Sustainable tourism destinations are often promoted as the ethical choice for discerning travellers, with some marketers taking full advantage of the widely acknowledged ambiguities implicit in the term. More recently “resilience” has generated appeal in the academic tourism literature as a term that might capture core aspects of sustainability, while acknowledging the considerable influences that multiple contexts have on the capacity of communities to adapt and ultimately sustain their tourism enterprises. The resilience concept encompasses an inclusive and integrative “social ecological systems” approach which gives it a firm interdisciplinary underpinning in its application in tourism. While in a tourism context sustainability and resilience are kindred terms, relatively little scholarly effort has been committed to a critical tr...

This editorial reviews sustainable tourism research as reflected in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism over the past twenty-five years, followed by specific consideration of more recent trends. It looks back in order to consider how sustainable tourism research, and its coverage in the Journal, has changed and developed, and is continuing to do so. It also uses the review to suggest ways in which the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and research in this field, might usefully continue to move forward in the future to further increase its relevance, innovation and impact.

This overview paper examines three areas crucial to understanding why, despite clear scientific evidence for the growing environmental impacts of tourism transport, there is large-scale inertia in structural transitions and a lack of political will to enact meaningful sustainable mobility policies. These include the importance of addressing socio-technical factors, barriers posed by “technology myths” and the need to overcome “transport taboos” in policy-making. The paper seeks pathways to sustainable mobility by bridging the science–policy gap between academic research and researchers, and policy-makers and practitioners. It introduces key papers presented at the Freiburg 2014 workshop, covering the case for researcher engagement using advocacy and participatory approaches, the role of universities in creating their own social mobility policies, the power of social mechanisms encouraging long-haul travel, issues in consumer responsibility development, industry self-regulation and the operation of realpolitik decision-making and implementation inside formal and informal destination-based mobility partnerships. Overall, the paper argues that governments and the tourism and transport industries must take a more cautious approach to the technological optimism that fosters policy inertia, and that policy-makers must take a more open approach to implementing sustainable transport policies. A research agenda for desirable transport futures is suggested.

This editorial for the special issue on ‘Desirable Tourism Transport Futures’ explores approaches to transitioning the tourism sector to a sustainable emissions path. It starts by describing an undesirable tourism transport future associated with a business-as-usual scenario, which will inevitably cause the climate mitigation goals outlined in the Paris Climate Accord (2015) to soon become unattainable. We then outline a scenario for a climatically desirable future, the social and economic implications of which are explored. The challenge of mitigating climate change is critical to desirable tourism transportation futures, although to date relatively little attention has been paid to this aspect of sustainable tourism. This is an omission that must be urgently addressed. This special issue addresses desirable tourist transportation futures in relation to deep cut emissions reductions and, therefore, mitigation of climate change-induced environmental impacts. It is important that desirable tourism transport futures are critically considered in terms of both spatial and temporal scale. The scenarios that inform this introductory article provide some insights at the long-term macro-scale. These scenarios are associated with desirable and undesirable elements that will no doubt continue to be the subject of much debate and contestation. While these scenarios will represent both opportunities and threats to the full spectrum of tourism industry stakeholders, they should also inform manifold avenues of future research at a critical moment in the evolution of tourism transportation and the pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030).

Anthropogenic climate change is a wicked problem, requiring fundamental behavioural and technological responses now, in the Anthropocene, a term denoting the current era of human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth. Travel and transport policies are key to effective responses, confronting both leisure and business travellers, including academics. This paper explores in detail the factors that promote or suppress academic travel, examining institutional policies which frame academic mobility practices at three New Zealand universities; University of Otago, University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington. It finds evidence of little congruence between sustainability statements, with their wide discourses on environmental sustainability, and the institutional policies governing academic mobility. Three overriding themes emerging from the analysis are presented: hollow words (describing a lack of meaningful commitment to sustainability, with disconnections between ...

The period leading to and immediately after the release of the IPCC's fifth series of climate change assessments saw substantial efforts by climate change denial interests to portray anthropogenic climate change (ACC) as either unproven theory or a negligible contribution to natural climate variability, including the relationship between tourism and climate change. This paper responds to those claims by stressing that the extent of scientific consensus suggests that human-induced warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Second, it responds in the context of tourism research and ACC, highlighting tourism's significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as climate change's potential impacts on tourism at different scales. The paper exposes the tactics used in ACC denial papers to question climate change science by referring to non-peer-reviewed literature, outlier studies, and misinterpretation of research, as well as potential links to think tanks and interest groups. The paper concludes that climate change science does need to improve its communication strategies but that the world-view of some individuals and interests likely precludes acceptance. The connection between ACC and sustainability illustrates the need for debate on adaptation and mitigation strategies, but that debate needs to be grounded in scientific principles not unsupported skepticism.

This paper explores the suitability of community-based conservation measures to complement a proposed command-and-control approach for two multi-user bays with spinner dolphins in Hawai`i, USA, which have considerable dolphin watching tourist activities and human–dolphin interactions. The paper uses Ostrom's common-pool resource theory as an analytical lens, with an assessment of the attributes of the resource and the user(s) to explore questions of governance and sustainability. In Hawai`i, spinner dolphins move predictably from offshore overnight feeding grounds into shallow bays for daytime rest, interacting frequently with humans using these bays for tourism and other social, recreational, and subsistence purposes. To reduce the current negative interactions with dolphins, managers are seeking to implement a command-and-control approach, namely time–area closures. Our analysis indicates that viewing the bay as a resource with tourism as one of many human demands, instead of specifically focusing on do...

The application of sustainable development (SD) in organisational strategy has been debated for over 20 years. There is much social and political support for sustainability, but very little empirical research into its value, particularly to public sector organisations. This paper reports on the first empirical research into the application of Sustainable Market Orientation (SMO), a conceptual merging of the principles of sustainable development and market orientation, to be applied in strategic management. The research context is the New Zealand Department of Conservation's (DoC) administration of national park policy with particular focus on the Fiordland National Park. In-depth interviews were made with 33 DoC stakeholders, 9 internal and 24 external, including tourism businesses, local and national politicians and tourists and NGOs. The findings confirm the value of SMO in public service strategy management particularly in terms of balancing environmental, social and economic strategy, defining public ...

This paper introduces and explores the psychological and social factors that both contribute to and inhibit behaviour change vis-à-vis sustainable (tourist) mobility. It is based on papers presented at the Freiburg 2012 workshop. Specifically, it reviews climate change attitudes and perceptions, the psychological benefits of tourism mobilities, addictive elements of mobility and social norming effects, the attitude-behaviour gap (i.e., cognitive dissonance between understandings of, and responses to, climate change), the psychology of modal shifts, the psychology of travel speed/time, and psychological explanations for the perceived importance of long distance travel. It notes that anthropogenic climate change is an inescapable reality, and that tourism’s share of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions appears set to rise substantially. There is little prospect of technical solutions adequately addressing this problem. The paper concludes that, while a comprehensive understanding of tourist psychology is necessary to inform policy makers, it alone will be insufficient to achieve emission reductions, and bring tourism to a climatically sustainable pathway, if treated in isolation. Radical change in the structures of provision is also necessary. That change may take the form of infrastructure planning, including financial and economic infrastructure (e.g. taxation regimes and emission trading schemes) for sustainable mobility.

This paper reports on a research project that examined ecotourism visitor experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand and whether or not those experiences challenged visitors to consider environmental issues. Twelve study sites in three nationwide geographical clusters were drawn from a comprehensive database of 479 eco/nature tourism operations based on each operation fulfilling 14 selection criteria. The operations offer maximum variation in the ecotourism experiences that they provide. The qualitative research methods implemented at these sites are described. Observational and interview data were employed to critically assess the visitor experiences reported at the study sites. Five important aspects of the visitor experience emerged from data analysis. These were considered to be effective in drawing visitor attention to environmental issues of relevance. The results indicate that ecotourism visitor experiences may be an effective medium via which environmental values may be influenced.

The dynamics of the tourism industry are well illustrated by the case of New Zealand's tourism development over the last decade. The number of international tourists visiting New Zealand has doubled in the last ten years to approximately 1.5 million annual visitors. Associated with this growth has been a significant shift in patterns of tourist demand. No longer do most tourists simply comply with established tourist routes linking the high profile scenic attractions. Rather tourists have demonstrated a preference for more independent and dispersed patterns of travel, including an increase in demand for settings that offer subjective qualities of wilderness experience. This poses a complex but intriguing management challenge. If wilderness recreation involves pristine natural settings in the complete absence of facility development and visitor management, then these resources are more prone to degradation so than any other natural tourism resources. This paper suggests that an understanding of tourist per...