Student Perspectives of Responsible Tourism Behaviour: The Role of Tourism Education

ABSTRACT

Education is increasingly recognized as an important tool that can be used to support sustainability action and change. With more than one billion people traveling internationally each year, it is essential we develop effective ways to educate and encourage these travelers to adopt more responsible and sustainable long-term behaviors when traveling. As students studying tourism are the “next generation” of the travel and tourism workforce, they arguably play an integral role in affecting such collective changes in travel behavior. This paper reports on how the Education for Sustainability approach is being applied in an Australian university undergraduate course in an attempt to foster a greater stewardship toward responsible and sustainable tourism. The paper also seeks to empirically understand the assumption that education is key to changing tourist attitudes toward sustainable and responsible travel.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible tourism behavior
• sustainable tourism behavior
• sustainability education
• education for sustainability (EfS)