Intervening in academic interventions: framing social marketing's potential for successful sustainable tourism behavioural change

Abstract

Given tourism's growing emissions and contribution to environmental change, the positive potential of behavioural interventions, and especially social marketing, has increasingly become a focus for sustainable tourism and mobility research. This paper uses the lens of social marketing to investigate the capacities of tourism researchers to contribute to sustainable tourist behavioural change. Several key and interrelated issues are identified: the nature of socio-technical systems and regimes, understanding what constitutes a successful behavioural intervention, the role of theory and belief systems in interventions, and the potential role of upstream social marketing in policy learning and system change. In the case of social marketing, the essentially political nature of engaging in communications on sustainability is also highlighted. This has implications for the social marketing knowledge base on which sustainable tourism behaviour research draws, such as the value of political marketing and psychology, as well as the challenge that this provides for notions of “value-free” or “objective” tourism research. The need for behavioural change by tourism researchers, as well as by governments, the industry, and tourists is noted. These issues are critically evaluated and expanded upon to aid academic researchers in understanding and promoting behaviour change in tourism studies.

介入学术干预措施：为成功的可持续性旅游行为变化构筑社会营销潜力

行为干预的积极潜能，尤其是社会营销，为旅游业的发展和环境改变做出了贡献，并逐渐成为可持续旅游和流动研究的焦点。本文从社会营销角度探讨了旅游研究者的能力，并以此帮助对可持续性旅游行为转变的研究。文章将确定以下几个关键点及相关问题：社会技术体系和制度的性质，理解成功行为干预的构成，干预措施中理论和信仰体系的作用，以及上游社会营销在政策学习与制度变迁中起到的潜在作用。其中，社会营销在可持续发展中建设中的政治本质将被重点提及。这影响了已有的可持续旅游行为研究中社会营销知识，如政治营销和心理学的价值，而对由此提出的``价值中立"或是``客观"旅游研究的概念也是一种挑战。文章还着重提出了旅游研究者，政府，企业和旅游者对行为转变的需求。这个问题将被仔细分析，并用来帮助研究人员更好地理解和探索旅游学中的行为转变。

Keywords:

• behavioural intervention
• political psychology
• social marketing
• socio-technical regime
• socio-technical system
• sustainable behavioural change

关键词:

• 行为干预
• 政治心理
• 社会营销
• 社会技术制度
• 社会技术系统
• 可持续行为变化

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the paper “Political psychology and tourism: points of intervention in upstream (and downstream?) social and political marketing for sustainable tourism mobility” was presented at the “Psychology of governing sustainable tourism mobility: Bridging the science-policy gap”, 2nd International Workshop in the Black Forest, Freiburg, Germany, 1–4 July 2014. Comments received and discussion at the workshop have contributed greatly to the present paper. The particular contributions and insights of the workshop organisers, and Nicole Aignier, Dorothee Bohn, and Yael Ram are gratefully acknowledged as are those of the editors and anonymous referees. Usual caveats apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

C. Michael Hall

C. Michael Hall is a professor at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; visiting professor, Linneaus University, Sweden; docent, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland; and senior research fellow, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has written widely on tourism, regional development, environmental change, heritage, and sustainability.