Sustainable urban tourism: understanding and developing visitor pro-environmental behaviours

Abstract

This paper shifts the debate on sustainable tourism destinations from an emphasis on ecotourism and eco-resorts towards sustainable urban tourism destinations. A quantitative online survey of visitors to Melbourne, Australia, examined tourists’ pro-environmental behaviours in four major categories: recycling; green transport use; sustainable energy/material use (lighting/water usage), and green food consumption. It explores five major antecedents to those categories: habitual behaviour, environmental attitudes, facilities available, a need to take a break from environmental duties, and sense of tourist social responsibility. The paper also examines the poorly understood belief that pro-environmental behaviour weakens when residents become tourists. Existing habits were found to strongly influence all four urban pro-environmental behaviours. Available facilities are the second most important antecedent. Overall, urban tourist pro-environment behaviour drivers differ markedly from those of residents or ecotourists. A range of tourism industry and public sector agency policy recommendations are made, in terms of developing specific, well sited and easy to find/use environmental infrastructure assets such as recycling facilities and public transport, reducing implementation barriers and in formulating an overall pro-environmental image for the destination. The study envisages a new concept, tourist social responsibility, with high relevance to furthering tourism's sustainability.

可持续城市旅游：理解和培养旅游者的环保行为

这篇文章从旅游目的地可持续发展的研究中心转移到了城市旅游目的地中的生态旅游和生态度假村。对在墨尔本和澳大利亚的旅游者采用网络定量调查的方式，从回收、环保交通的使用、可持续能源/原材料使用、环保食品消费这主要四个方面研究了他们的环保行为。本文发掘了在这些目录下的五种主要的因素：习惯性行为、环境态度、旅游的个人责任感和社会责任感。这篇文章也检验了当居民变为旅游者时，他们对于环保行为的理解也会变差。本文发现习惯对于四种城市环保行为都有很大影响。现有的设施时第二大影响环保行为的因素。整体上说，城市旅游者的环保行为与当地居民和生态旅游者的行为有很显著的不同。本文提出了一系列对于旅游业和公共部门机构决策的建议，根据发展的不同情况，提出了设立容易发现/使用的环保设施，如回收设施和公共交通；减少实施障碍和建设旅游目的地的总体环保形象的建议。本文也设想了一个新概念，旅游者社会责任，对于以后的旅游可持续发展非常重要。

Keywords:

• urban destinations
• tourists’ sustainable behaviour
• environmentally friendly destinations
• mass tourism
• eco-cities
• tourist social responsibility

关键词:

• 可持续旅游
• 大众旅游
• 环境态度
• 个人社会责任
• 城市可持续性
• 生态城市

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support in developing the paper provided by the Centre for Tourism, Sport and Services Research, and ASIST, Griffith University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dale Miller

Dale Miller is a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing at Griffith University. Her research concentrations include cities as destinations, sustainable business practices and branding. She has published in international journals including the Journal of Business Research, Tourism Analysis and European Journal of Marketing.

Bill Merrilees

Bill Merrilees is a professor of marketing in the Department of Marketing at Griffith University, Australia. His primary research interests include branding and destinations. He has published extensively in international journals.

Alexandra Coghlan

Alexandra Coghlan is a senior lecturer in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management at Griffith University. Her primary research interests are tourism partnerships, volunteer tourism, transformative travel experiences and nature-based tourism.