Individuals around the globe engage in sustainable consumption in their everyday life,
e.g., when it comes to individual transportation. Although tourism behavior contributes to global
carbon emissions to a considerable extent, consumers' awareness of sustainability in the tourism
industry is still underresearched. Placing eco-labels next to tourist offers on websites might direct
consumer's perception towards more sustainable offers. By employing eye-tracking techniques and
surveys, this research aimed at linking information about sustainable tourist offers, perception of
eco-labels and subsequent perception and preferences of tourism services. In Study 1, eight existing
hotel offers with sustainability certification (four different labels) were selected and their websites
presented to 48 participants (four websites each), whose eye movements were tracked. After looking
at each website, they rated the overall appearance of the website. Based on the results, in the second
study, participants' (n = 642) awareness of labels, their values and attitudes regarding sustainable
behavior were found to influence their preference for certified tour operators. In addition, individuals'
ideas of their perfect holidays were captured to allow a better understanding of their motivation.
This research proposes implementing appropriate sustainable labeling in the tourism industry to
increase awareness about sustainability among travelers and subsequently increase sustainable
travel behavior.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:5603 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Penz, Elfriede, Hofmann, Eva, Hartl, Barbara |
| Publisher | MDPI AG |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.3390/su9061056, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability, http://www.mdpi.com/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/5603/ |
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