Greg Richards and Wendy Morrill
Many people see themselves as responsible travellers, but act irresponsibly. Our research on youth travel has uncovered a significant think-do gap between expressed desires and actual behaviour. Young travellers want to travel sustainably, but their actions could be seen otherwise, which highlights the quandary of sustainable travel.
In the latest WYSE New Horizons survey, we asked travellers aged 16-29 about their attitudes to travel, the environment and sustainability. Young people increasingly say they are concerned about the environment when they travel. Almost a quarter indicated that sustainable travel initiatives were extremely important to them in 2023, compared with 15% in 2017.
While expressing concern about their environmental impact, they don’t seem to act on it. Even those with environmental concerns are travelling more, but only 3.6% are very likely to buy carbon offsets and 6.1% buy eco-friendly products while travelling. In contrast, 65% of respondents said they had no environmental concerns about their travel, even when travelling by air. Remarkably, 60% of travellers who said sustainable travel was extremely important to them also said environmental concerns had no impact on their travel behaviour.
Those wishing to travel sustainably also travel just as much as others. Those who desired a more sustainable lifestyle, or said they were more environmentally aware also made frequent international trips. Only those who said they developed an awareness of their own environmental impact because of their trip (35%) were travelling less.
It seems measuring any changes in the sustainable travel think-do gap is difficult. Those who act based on personal awareness travel less and may not feature in travel surveys. Yet, these travellers are also those most likely to support sustainability initiatives when they do travel. Is closing the gap a matter of developing more awareness of one’s environmental impact through travel (ironically) or simply providing new options to travellers to act on their sustainability concerns? Does ‘wishwashing’ prevent the travel industry from offering options to close the think-do gap?
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