Travel footprint, or how responsibly and sustainably do professionals creating and providing travel experiences behave?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32976/stratfuz.2024.20Keywords:
sustainability, travel, ecological footprintAbstract
In the 21st century, sustainability has become a prominent issue in the tourism sector. While conscious and responsible consumer decisions are increasingly prioritized in our daily lives, the question arises whether similar scrutiny is applied during leisure and business travel. In this recent empirical research, these questions are examined in detail in the light of the travel habits of tourism experts. The findings indicate that tourism professionals make more conscious consumer decisions in their daily activities compared to when they engage in leisure or business travel, where economic considerations tend to take precedence amidst today's macro-environmental changes, alongside a preference for compressed experiences. We further investigated the extent to which tourism professionals attending a professional conference on sustainability behaved consciously and responsibly when choosing their mode of transportation to attend the event. In this regard, we calculated their travel footprint, which is consumption-based and solely based on the use of transportation modes. We introduced this indicator on a pilot basis, with plans to apply it more extensively and over longer timeframes in the future, and to compare it across different target groups. Our main findings that tourism professionals surveyed in the research consider sustainability to be important and even prominent in their daily activities, and less so in their business activities, only 11% of them consciously choose the means of transport.
References
Behringer, Zs., Kulcsár, N., Hinek, M., & Tevely, T. (2023). Changes in tourist decisions in the shadow of the global crisis – how travel preferences and consumer priorities evolved during COVID-19 and beyond. The Hungarian Journal of Marketing and Management, 57(2). 61-70. https://doi.org/10.15170/MM.2023.57.02.06 https://journals.lib.pte.hu/index.php/mm/article/view/6555/6238
Bhaskara, G. I. & Filimonau, V. (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic and organisational learning for disaster planning and management: A perspective of tourism businesses from a destination prone to consecutive disasters. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 46(6). 364–375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2021.01.011
Dankó, L. (2023). Helyi termékekre fókuszáló turizmus a körforgásos és fenntartható gazdaságban (Tourism focusing on local products in a circular and sustainable economy) In: Bene, Zs. (szerk.), THE Eszencia – Bor és Tudomány: Fejezetek a Lorántffy Intézet oktatóinak tollából (Chapters from the Lorántffy Institute's lecturers). (pp. 86-100.) Sárospatak, Tokaj-Hegyalja Egyetem
DEFRA (2023). Greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2023
Galli, A., Giampietro, M., Goldfinger, S., Lazarus, E., Lin, D., Saltelli, A., Wackernagel, M., & Müller, F. (2016). Questioning the ecological footprint. Ecological Indicators, 69, 224–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.04.014
Galli, A., Iha, K., Moreno Pires, S., Mancini, M. S., Alves, A., Zokai, G., Lin, D., Murthy, A., & Wackernagel, M. (2020). Assessing the ecological footprint and biocapacity of Portuguese cities: Critical results for environmental awareness and Local Management. Cities, 96, 102442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102442
Gonda, T. & Raffay, Z. (2021). Környezettudatosak-e a hazai turisták? (Are domestic tourists environmentally conscious?) Turizmus Bulletin, 21(2). 4-14. https://doi.org/10.14267/TURBULL.2021v21n2.1
Gössling, S. (2012). Climate policy and tourism. In: Holden, A. & Fennell, D. (szerk.), The Routledge Handbook of Tourism and the Environment. (pp. 421–434.) Routledge, New York.
Harangozó, G., Kovács, Z., Kondor, A. C., & Szabó, B. (2019). A budapesti várostérség fogyasztási alapú ökológiai lábnyomának változása 2003 és 2013 között (Change in the consumption-based ecological footprint of the Budapest urban area between 2003 and 2013). Területi Statisztika, 59(1), 97–123. https://doi.org/10.15196/ts590105
Harangozó, G., Széchy, A. Z., & Zilahy, G. (2016). A fenntarthatósági lábnyom-megközelítések szerepe a vállalatok fenntarthatósági szempontú teljesítményértékelésében (The role of sustainability footprint approaches in the sustainability-focused performance assessment of companies). Vezetéstudomány / Budapest Management Review, 47(7), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.14267/veztud.2016.07.01
Harangozo, G., & Szigeti, C. (2017). Corporate Carbon Footprint Analysis in practice – with a special focus on validity and reliability issues. Journal of Cleaner Production, 167, 1177–1183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.07.237
Hegedüs, S., Kiss, K. & Kovács, E. (2023). A környezettudatos fogyasztói magatartás turisztikai aspektusai (Tourism aspects of environmentally responsible consumer behaviour). Turizmus Bulletin, 23(1). 15-24. https://doi.org/10.14267/TURBULL.2023v23n1.2
Jóvér, V., Major, Z., Németh, A., Kurhan, D., Sysyn, M., & Fischer, S. (2023). Investigation of the geometrical deterioration of paved superstructure tramway tracks in Budapest (Hungary). Infrastructures, 8(8), 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures8080126
Kántor, Sz. (2022). Hallgatók fenntartható turisztikai fogyasztásai (Sustainable tourism consumption by students). Turisztikai és Vidékfejlesztési Tanulmányok, 7(4), 33-45. https://doi.org/10.15170/TVT.2022.07.04.03
Kitzes, J., Galli, A., Bagliani, M., Barrett, J., Dige, G., Ede, S., Erb, K., Giljum, S., Haberl, H., Hails, C., Jolia-Ferrier, L., Jungwirth, S., Lenzen, M., Lewis, K., Loh, J., Marchettini, N., Messinger, H., Milne, K., Moles, R., … Wiedmann, T. (2009). A research agenda for improving National Ecological Footprint Accounts. Ecological Economics, 68(7), 1991–2007. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.06.022
Kocsis, T. (2014). Is the Netherlands sustainable as a global-scale inner-city? Intenscoping Spatial Sustainability. Ecological Economics, 101, 103–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.03.002
Kovács, Z., Szigeti, C., Egedy, T., Szabó, B., & Kondor, A. C. (2017). Az urbanizáció környezeti hatásai - Az ingázás ökológiai lábnyomának változása a Budapesti várostérségben (The Environmental Impact of Urbanisation - Changing the Ecological Footprint of Commuting in the Budapest Urban Area). Területi Statisztika, 57(5), 469–494. https://doi.org/10.15196/ts570501
Kupi, M. & Szemerédi, E. (2022). A magyarok környezettudatos utazással kapcsolatos attitűdjeinek és egyes magatartásformáinak vizsgálata a Covid-19 járvány tükrében (Examining the attitudes and certain behaviours of Hungarians towards environmentally conscious travel in the light of the Covid-19 epidemic). Turisztikai és Vidékfejlesztési Tanulmányok, 7(2), 49-71.
Lin, D., Hanscom, L., Murthy, A., Galli, A., Evans, M., Neill, E., Mancini, M., Martindill, J., Medouar, F.-Z., Huang, S., & Wackernagel, M. (2018). Ecological footprint accounting for countries: Updates and results of the National Footprint Accounts, 2012–2018. Resources, 7(3), 58. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources7030058
Lukács, R., Tütünkov-Hrisztov, J. & Grotte, J. (2022). A hazai generációk, különös tekintettel a digitális bennszülöttek szállodaválasztási szokásai a fenntarthatóság és a digitalizáció mentén (Hotel choice patterns of domestic generations, especially digital natives, in the context of sustainability and digitalisation). Turizmus Bulletin, 22(1), 26-37. https://doi.org/10.14267/TURBULL.2022v22n1.3
MacInnes, S., Grün, B. & Dolnicar, S. (2022). Habit drives sustainable tourist behaviour. Annals of Tourism Research, 92, 103329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2021.103329
Manea, G.-C., & Cozea, A. (2022). Regional economic development supported by sustainable tourism. Dutch Journal of Finance and Management, 5(1), 21885. https://doi.org/10.55267/djfm/13400
Muth, D. (2022). A klímatudatosságot magyarázó elméletek átfogó elemzése: strukturális, intézményi és egyéni megközelítések (A comprehensive analysis of theories explaining climate awareness: structural, institutional and individual approaches). Tér és Társadalom, 36(4). 86-107. https://doi.org/10.17649/TET.36.4.3426
Nguyen, D. T., Kuo, K. C., Lu, W.M., & Nhan, D. T. (2024). How Sustainable Are Tourist Destinations Worldwide? An Environmental, Economic, and Social Analysis. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 48(4), 698-711. https://doi.org/10.1177/10963480231168286
Pololikashvili, Z. (2024). UN Adopts a New Global Standard to Measure the Sustainability of Tourism. https://www.unwto.org/news/un-adopts-a-new-global-standard-to-measure-the-sustainability-of-tourism
Rojas, C., Muñiz, I., Quintana, M., Simon, F., Castillo, B., de la Fuente, H., Rivera, J., & Widener, M. (2022). Short run “rebound effect” of Covid on the Transport Carbon Footprint. Cities, 131, 104039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104039
Szigeti, C., Kovács, Z., Egedy, T., & Szabó, B. (2019). Az ingázásból származó ökológiai Lábnyom csökkentésének lehetőségei a közösségi gazdaság révén a budapesti városrégióban (Opportunities to reduce the Ecological Footprint of Commuting through the Community Economy in the Budapest Urban Region). Közlekedéstudományi Szemle, 69(2), 58–74. https://doi.org/10.24228/ktsz.2019.2.5
Toth, G., & Szigeti, C. (2016). The historical ecological footprint: From over-population to over-consumption. Ecological Indicators, 60, 283–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.06.040
UNWTO (2023). World Tourism Day 2023. https://www.unwto.org/world-tourism-day-2023
Wackernagel, M., & Beyers, B. (2019). Ecological footprint: Managing our biocapacity budget. New Society Publishers.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
