Generation Z as a critical question mark for sustainable tourism – An exploratory study in Portugal

Abstract

PurposeMuch has been speculated about the role that Generation Z will play in achieving more sustainable development. The tourism sector gains a special role in this discussion. On the one hand, tourism, due to its growing importance, has had a significant impact on environmental sustainability. On the other hand, Generation Z will be the largest group of travellers ever in the future. In this context, the objective of the present study is to explore the interest of young Portuguese generation Z in sustainable development goals (SDGs), tourism sustainability (TS) and their pro-environmental habits and how these categories influence the choice of sustainable tourism destination.Design/methodology/approachAn online questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 305 young Portuguese. The quantitative analysis was performed with the application of the partial least square (PLS) model.FindingsOverall, the authors found that despite our respondents showing an interest in the SDGs the same interest is not true for tourism. Although most respondents are concerned about choosing a sustainable destination, they do not care about keeping destinations sustainable, nor do they have pro-environmental habits.Originality/valueThis study presents the first evidence of the attitudes, beliefs and pro-environmental habits of Portuguese Gen Zers and their potential contribution to TS.

Young peoples’ environmentally sustainable tourism attitude and responsible behavioral intention

“…The focus group results show that Generation Z considers their own financial capabilities in their environmentally responsible behavior and prefers sustainable businesses as part of their economic responsibility. In summary, these findings correspond to the results of Salinero et al (2022) about prosustainable tourism behavior of Generation Z being present on economic, environmental, social and cultural levels, while contradicting the findings of Pinho and Gomes (2023) about Generation Z not having proenvironmental habits. While the studies by Salinero et al (2022) and D’Arco et al (2023) focus exclusively on the ascription of responsibility to Generation Z tourists themselves, the present study sheds light on perceptions about divergent stakeholders among providers, destinations and governments.…”

“…Other studies have centered around exploring Generation Z's motivation for environmental sustainability, with Lin et al (2022) highlighting eudaimonic environmental motivation. In opposition to these findings, Pinho and Gomes (2023) demonstrated a lower interest of Generation Z tourists in sustainable tourism, indicating that they are neither concerned about choosing sustainable destinations nor about practicing environmentally friendly behavior.…”

“…Recently, tourism research has begun to explore Generation Z, as evidenced by the special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism on the topic of "Generation Z: The sustainable tourism generation?". Corresponding with the need to explore Generation Z (Kaplan, 2020), these studies focused on examining influences on Generation Z's environmentally responsible tourist behavior (D'Arco et al, 2023;Salinero et al, 2022;Seyfi et al, 2022), their motivations (Lin et al, 2022;Pinho and Gomes, 2023), and further compared Generation Z to other generations (Prayag et al, 2022). While D'Arco et al (2023) classified solely two selected proenvironmental behaviors, namely, booking an environmentally friendly hotel and choosing sustainable transport, Salinero et al (2022) examined four dimensions of environmentally friendly tourism behavior but did not link them to Generation Z's environmentally responsible attitudes.…”

From Cash to Central Bank Digital Currency: Can Gen Z Adopt It?

“…Postmillennial layak mendapatkan perhatian khusus sebagai generasi pertama di abad 21 yang besar dengan keadaan dunia sangat berbeda dari generasi sebelumnya (Pinho & Gomes, 2023). Anggapan masyarakat terhadap generasi Z yang digerakkan oleh konsumen menimbulkan kesan serba cepat, materialistik, paling tidak sabar, individualistik, mandiri, dan banyak tuntutan (Agarwal, 2018;Stylos et al, 2021).…”

Assessing Self-Reliance among Generation Z in Junior High School: An Analysis Using Rasch Model

“…Generation Z or called "internet generation term (Ozkan & Solmaz, 2015) is an object that easily conducts in bullying activities especially in cyberbullying (Tamrin et al, 2022). Furthermore, they also have some abilities such as critized the environment explicitly (Wee, 2019), support sustainibility (Orea-Giner & Fusté-Forné, 2023;Pinho & Gomes, 2023), and proficient in digitalization (Parahita et al, 2023). These abilities of Gen Z can affect their future career and how they decide to involve in sustainibility development program.…”