Climate change perceptions among Australian non-frequent flyers

ABSTRACT

Growing acceptance and concern about anthropogenic climate change is beginning to influence tourists’ travel practices, with a hardening of attitudes towards long-haul aviation now evident in a number of key European outbound tourism markets. This raises timely questions as to whether or not the need for urgent climate action is influencing air travel decisions in other markets. This paper investigates climate concerns and air travel practices in the Australian outbound tourism market. Specifically, we set out to examine whether or not climate concerns may be influencing Australian non-frequent travellers to consider distance as a factor in their air travel destination decision-making, with a particular focus on New Zealand as a destination. Reflecting previous studies, the results indicate widespread concern about climate change combined with an unwillingness to change established air travel behaviours. However, in contrast to previous research, participants in this study did not show an overt and passive ‘attitude-behaviour gap’ based on denial and guilt, but a more conscious reasoning that led to scepticism towards their individual ability to enact change while operating in a system that is not really geared to make this change possible.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• aviation
• New Zealand
• emissions
• tourist behaviour

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all participants who kindly accepted to participate in the study and shared their knowledge and time with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Arianne C. Reis has a Ph.D. in Tourism and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Science and Health, Western Sydney University, and an Adjunct Research Fellow with the School of Business and Tourism, Southern Cross University, Australia. Her research interests lie within the broader theme of sustainability of tourism and leisure practices, with a particular focus on social and environmental justice.

James E. S. Higham holds the position of Professor, Department of Tourism, University of Otago (New Zealand) and Visiting Professor of sustainable tourism, Norwegian School of Hotel Management (Norway). His research interests address tourism and global environmental change across global–local scales of analysis, with a specific focus at present on global climate change, personal aeromobility and behaviour change.

ORCiD

Arianne C. Reis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1630-8857

James E. S. Higham http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1405-7035

Notes

1. In July 2012, the (then) Australian Labour Government instituted an emissions trading scheme, or the so-called carbon tax. With the opposition winning the following federal elections in 2013, the plan was abolished and, as a result, ‘Australia’s carbon pricing mechanism [entered] history as one of the best-designed yet shortest-lived policies for climate change mitigation’ (Jotzo, 2012, p. 476).