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We argue that research aiming to understand or change human behavior must measure real behavior, not just behavioral intentions, to draw valid conclusions. The work highlights the well-established gap between people's intentions and behavior across various tourism and hospitality contexts. Methodologically, we encourage authors not to rely on behavioral intentions and instead measure real behavior. We provide an overview of methods available to capture real behavior either automatically or manually in tourism contexts. The article also introduces a special issue in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism that showcases the measurement of real environmentally significant tourist behavior using diverse methods, such as biometric techniques, big data analytics, field observations, and experiments. We conclude by discussing five issues that prevent studies form drawing causal conclusions about behavior, namely, (i) reliance on behavioral intentions; (ii) a sample that does not reflect the population of interest; (iii) errors in measuring latent psychological constructs; (iv) consumer hypocrisy and social desirability bias; and (v) situational factors and habits. By advocating for a transition towards measuring real behavior, the article and the special issue aim to increase the validity and impact of research seeking to understand human behavior and drive effective behavior change for addressing global challenges. Highlights: Much tourism research aims to understand or change behavior. Yet, behavior is not routinely measured, limiting the validity of findings. This article discusses the many possible approaches to capturing real behavior. This article outlines the most valid research design to study behavior (change). This article introduces the special issue on measuring real behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging restaurant guests to order vegetarian dishes plays a key role in creating a more environmentally sustainable tourism sector. However, for many consumers eating a meat dish is an important aspect of their enjoyment-focused restaurant experience. Identifying new approaches that support restaurants in selling more vegetarian dishes are urgently needed. Drawing from hedonic psychology and affective forecasting theory, this study tests two interventions aimed at directing ordering towards specific vegetarian dishes in a scenario-based survey experiment with 742 consumers. Results show the potential of affective forecasting as a promising psychological mechanism. Displaying an appetising picture of a vegetarian dish on a menu increases stated ordering of the dish because the picture directs consumer attention to the dish and triggers them to imagine eating the dish. Consumers who imagine eating the dish feel stronger anticipated enjoyment of eating it. Adding to the picture an invitation to imagine eating the dish does not further increase the effect. This study explains the psychological mechanism of how a picture of an appetising vegetarian dish changes food choices and provides restaurants with a cost-effective measure to direct ordering towards more environmentally sustainable dishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourist behavior has a critical impact on the environmental sustainability of tourism. The hedonic nature of tourism and lack of an economic incentive make tourist behavior particularly hard to change. Making tourists behave more environmentally friendly would have substantial environmental benefits. This is the aim of the present study. Three alternative approaches are tested. The most successful approach—based on sharing monetary savings with guests—leads to a 42 percent change in one specific tourist behavior with negative environmental consequences. This new sharing-based approach significantly outperforms current approaches of increasing awareness of environmental consequences and of tourist ability to make a change. Tourism businesses should consider replacing current appeals with sharing-based schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourists must behave in a more environmentally friendly way to reduce the negative environmental impact of the global tourism industry. Only a few approaches have been developed to promote this. This may be because it is generally assumed that all kinds of environmentally sustainable behaviour have the same drivers. This study challenges this assumption. Results of this research indicate that specific environmentally sustainable tourist behaviours have distinctly different drivers. Consequently, interventions designed to make tourists behave in a more environmentally friendly way need to be specific to the behaviour targeted for modification. Alternatively, choice architectures can be altered in an attempt to change behaviours without having to modify people's values or beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary carbon offsetting by air passengers could help counteract environmental damage caused by air travel. But adoption rates among air travellers are low. This study (1) develops new communication messages which counteract barriers to carbon offsetting identified in prior studies, and (2) tests their effectiveness using psychophysiological and attitudinal measures, a technique new to sustainable tourism research methodologies. Results point to low levels of traveller awareness of carbon offsetting schemes, the primary need for any message to attract the air passengers’ attention, the superiority of pictorial and short textual information as well as the identification of particularly effective content. The study makes three key contributions: (1) it highlights the critical importance of awareness raising as a precursor of behavioural change, (2) it offers tangible recommendations for improving carbon offsetting messages, and (3) it demonstrates the usefulness of psychophysiological measures for pre-testing alternative social marketing messages aimed at increasing environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour across a range of applications. Findings of considerable practical importance include refinements of current messages to increase both attention levels and emotional arousal, and the positive impact of promoting additional social co-benefits alongside environmental benefits. Future valuable research themes using psychophysiological and attitudinal measures are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews and evaluates the wide range of supply and demand side measures employed and tested to reduce the environmental impacts of tourist accommodation. It focuses on the importance of understanding market segments and their pro-environmental behaviour by exploring the personal and travel characteristics significantly associated with pro-environment beneficial change, empirically investigating hotel guest characteristics associated with higher towel reuse. Towel use per day, per room, is modelled according to the number of adults in the room, the number of children, and the type and origins of guests. Observed actual towel use by 204 travel parties spending 480 nights in a four-star hotel in Slovenia reveals key personal and travel characteristics of hotel guests which are predictive of towel reuse: their country of origin, booking methods used, being a business traveller and not being a family. Results point to a-priori market segments which could be given booking preference in periods of high demand to reduce hotel environmental footprints. Results also point to promising leverage points for interventions designed to modify the behaviour of hotel guests on site. The approach and methodology used could be applied to marketing pro-environmental concepts more widely across other sustainable initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global aspiration to mitigate climate change puts substantial pressure on the tourism sector – one of the most polluting industries – to operate in more sustainable ways. This study reviews intervention experiments in tourism and hospitality aimed at making tourist behaviour more sustainable. The analysis of 53 field experiments reveals the most promising intervention strategies. The resulting knowledge map highlights that past intervention studies were limited to only a small number of relevant target behaviours and intervention types, pointing to many unexplored areas that require urgent attention in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Misalignment of pro-environmental beliefs and environmentally unsustainable vacation behaviour can cause psychological tension to tourists. They manage this tension by finding justifications for their behaviour, rather than changing their behaviour. A recent study has systematized such justification; this systematics is used in the present study to investigate the existence of tourist segment sharing justification patterns. A finite mixture model with concomitant variables is used to analyse 2785 survey responses. Three segments are identified. Thegovernment blamersexpress strong interest in the environmental sustainability of their vacation, but deny both their responsibility and ability to make a difference. Thestruggling seekerswould not book their dream vacation if it was environmentally unfriendly, yet do not feel in control of reducing negative environmental impacts of their holiday, which they fully acknowledge. Theimpact neglectersalso state they would not book their dream vacation if it was environmentally unfriendly, but their main justification for taking – potentially environmentally harmful – vacations is denial of the negative environmental consequences of tourism. The existence of these differences in justification patterns indicates different approaches could counteract each of these segment-specific beliefs by inducing cognitive dissonance, shown in other contexts to induce behavioural change. Advice on approaches is given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper tackles a key issue arising from the United Nations World Tourism Organization call for consumers to take climate change into consideration when making travel decisions. Some people genuinely want to comply with this request. However, they face the “perplexity of environmental information”, a series of informational barriers to decision-making. Can they assess their travel's climate change impacts easily? Studies were conducted with 261 potential travellers in Australia and Slovenia. Results from an empirical study on using carbon footprint calculators suggest that they cannot: tourists are unfamiliar with carbon calculators and, if alerted to their existence, find them difficult to use and have doubts about their credibility. They are also not good at estimating, without assistance from a carbon calculator, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by different components of their vacation. Tourism industry and public policy makers interested in environmentally sustainable tourism need to develop improved ways of providing tourists with trustworthy and user-friendly information about the carbon footprint implications of their vacation decisions. In so doing they can empower tourists who want to consider environmental issues when planning their vacation to actually do so. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies which information about tourists serves as the best predictor of their pro-environmental behavior at home and on vacation. If a small set of predictors can be identified, the tourism industry would be able to use them to focus attention on attracting tourists with smaller environmental footprints. Results from a survey asking respondents about pro-environmental behavior in their role as residents and tourists indicate that environmental concern, altruism, feeling morally obliged to behave in an environmentally friendly manner, age and regional identity are the best predictors of the segment of people who behave in an environmentally friendly way at home. Income levels and moral obligation best predict membership of the segment of environmentally friendly tourists. The two segments overlap; differences between them are due to the fact that, at home, people can create the infrastructure they require to behave in an environmentally friendly way. On vacation they need to adjust to the infrastructure provided, which can act as a barrier to pro-environmental behavior. Results have direct practical implications, highlighting the value of demand-side approaches to environmentally sustainable tourism for protected areas, both urban and rural, such as focusing on those market segments that have the highest intrinsic inclination to protect the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A shift of attention from the dominant product orientation in environmentally sustainable tourism to a demand orientation has been suggested as a way of minimizing the effects of the inherent trade-offs the tourism industry faces between maximization of profits and investment in environmental sustainability. The success of such an approach depends on the existence of a class of tourists who are not only motivated to take care of the natural surroundings of the host destination, whether they are traveling in an ecotourism or general tourism context, but also represent an economically attractive market segment. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is empirical evidence for the existence of such a segment among the wider tourism population and, if so, how can it be characterized and thus marketed to. Willingness to pay is used as a criterion to define this segment, as it implicitly accounts for the trade-off that suggests environmental protection comes at a price. Results from the empirical survey study conducted in Australia indicate that environmentally responsible tourists who are willing to pay for environmental initiatives taken on by their tour operator can be characterized by a distinct profile with respect to travel information seeking, destination preferences, travel behavior, and willingness to pay--indicating that targeting such a segment of tourists in the general tourism context represents an attractive supplementary strategy to traditional supply-sided measures of sustainable destination management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The natural environment represents the main resource for many tourism destinations and tourists are increasingly interested in spending their vacation in unspoilt natural areas. Consequently, destination managers are under increased pressure to implement ecologically sustainable practices. Selective targeting of tourists has been proposed as one approach to sustainable destination management, but the feasibility of this approach remains untested. Therein lies the contribution of this study. Results from a survey of 1000 Australians indicated that market segments based on past environmentally friendly behaviour at the destination represent distinct groups with respect to psychographic, behavioural and socio-demographic personal characteristics. These explanatory variables contributed substantially to explaining pro-environmental behaviour. It was concluded that selective target marketing represents a feasible complement to current sustainable tourism management techniques which focus on tourists at the destination who may not necessarily be interested in protecting the local environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The environmental sustainability of the local tourism industry is increasingly a concern. Authors have proposed a demand-driven approach to sustainable destination management as complementary to traditional supply-side interventions. However, little empirical evidence supports the feasibility of such a demand-driven approach. This study contributes to this gap by investigating whether individuals who feel morally obliged to behave in an environmentally friendly manner represent useful target segments for destination management aiming to improve the ecological sustainability of the local tourism industry. Results indicate that distinctly different moral obligation segments exist that differ in pro-environmental behavior and attitudes. These segments are associated with distinctly different vacation preferences and can consequently be used by destination management for target marketing. Gaps between people's pro-environmental behavior at home and at the destination systematically differ across segments, leading to the conclusion that different combinations of demand and supply-side measures may be suitable to reduce the environmental footprint of different segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable tourism and ecotourism have now been researched in depth for some years. This paper highlights that researchers still have only a limited understanding of what tourist behaviour can be considered as sustainable, and little consensus about who environment-friendly tourists (EFTs) actually are. This study reviews theoretical and empirical studies by tourism researchers, and explores work done on environment-friendly behaviour in other disciplines. Results indicate that operationalisations of EFTs are inconsistent and, at times, do not ensure that EFTs are actually studied, thus jeopardising the quality of cumulative knowledge on this critical issue. There is little insight into who EFTs are. Suggestions for future work are made, which would develop more reliable and generalisable insights into EFT profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]