Binge flying

Cognitive Dissonance in Sustainability Scientists Regarding Air Travel for Academic Purposes: A Qualitative Study

“…In general, the observed types of denial of responsibility and denial of control concerning air travel were similar to previous findings relating to private and business contexts [8][9][10][11]48]. However, while air travel for personal reasons is justified by individuals as reflecting e.g., the desire to get away [7] or visiting friends and family [2,10], here academic air travel, as business air travel, is justified by the scientists as a necessity. Yet that necessity is to some extent socially constructed.…”

“…Almost every interviewee expressed feelings of dissonance. Whereas feelings of guilt in relation to flying have been previously documented [2,[8][9][10]18,25,39], feelings of frustration relating to the topic, which were common here, have not previously been documented. This matters not only per se, but because the specific affective state may influence the adoption of a particular mode of dissonance reduction [23].…”

“…While all forms of fossil fuel combustion for transport and other purposes have negative environmental effects, aviation has attracted critical attention in part due to the assumption that it is discretionary rather than essential-a view that is, of course, debatable. Nonetheless, technological solutions for aviation radiative forcing have been slow in coming [2] and on-going efficiency gains are unlikely to compensate for the ongoing growth of air-travel consumption [3]. In the context of increasingly stringent climate targets, fossil-fuelled aviation emissions may soon consume the major part of national emission budgets [3].…”

“…In order to reduce these negative feelings, behavior changes are one option, besides attitude changes and further resolution strategies [21][22][23]. Various studies have found that people rather tend to justify their flying behavior or deny its impact, instead of changing their behavior e.g., [2,[5][6][7]9,[24][25][26]. However, few studies of air travel have explicitly based their investigation on the framework of cognitive dissonance [8,10] and none (to our knowledge) have researched sustainability scientists from this perspective.This study aims to close this research gap and examines whether a small group of sustainability scientists experience an attitude-behavior gap regarding their air travel behavior in an academic context; whether they experience feelings of dissonance if they continue to fly; and how they resolve such feelings, if they exist.…”

Social judgments of behavioral versus substance-related addictions: A population-based study

“…Nevertheless, there is an emerging consensus that the so-called "behavioral addictions" are similar to substance-related addictions insofar as they generate short-term rewards that promote behavioral persistence, despite knowledge of adverse consequences (Grant, Potenza, Weinstein, & Gorelick, 2010;Karim & Chaudhri, 2012;Mudry et al, 2011). Application of the addiction concept to an increasing number of behaviors -ranging from the generally accepted (e.g., online gaming addiction; Hellman, Schoenmakers, Nordstrom, & van Holst, 2013;Wong & Hodgins, in press) through the more controversial (e.g., sex, television, and pornography addiction; Clarkson & Kopaczewski, 2013;Garcia & Thibaut, 2010;Sussman & Moran, 2013), to the highly speculative [e.g., so-called binge flying (Cohen, Higham, & Cavaliere, 2011) and street addiction; (BergenCico, Haygood-El, Jennings-Bey, & Lane, in press)] -can be observed not only in professional discussions and scholarly publications but in mass media as well (Hellman, 2009;Webb, 2012;Whitelocks, 2012).…”