How to communicate sustainable tourism products to customers: results from a choice experiment

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

Elgammal

Lamond

2016

130

Greenhushing selectively communicates fewer pro-sustainability actions by businesses than are practiced; based on a perception of customers' rights to consumerism. We first studied the gap between the communication of sustainability practices in the audits and websites of 31 small rural tourism businesses in the Peak District National Park (UK). The analysis showed that businesses only communicate 30% of all the sustainability actions practiced. Their websites emphasised customer benefits, using explicit, affective, experiential and active language that legitimises the customers' hedonistic use of the landscape, while downplaying complex issues and normalising sustainability to reduce customer guilt. Just one website mentioned climate change. We found that greenhushing results from a low moral intensity, masking potentially negative consequences of perceived lower competence, whilst protecting business from more cynical consumers who may interpret their statements as hypocritical. Subsequent textual analysis and interviews were used to understand how communication constitutes these organisations. We propose that greenhushing reshapes and constitutes tourism businesses through their communications. Moreover, greenhushing is a form of public moralisation that adopts communication practices similar to greenwashing, reflecting the social norms expected from a business; however, in this case, located in a moral muteness, rather than moral hypocrisy, that businesses accept but resent.

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 65%

Section: The Practice Of Sustainability Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greenhushing: the deliberate under communicating of sustainability practices by tourism businesses

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

Elgammal

Lamond

2016

130

“…These are not mutually exclusive: Those people that seek mutual benefit and symbiosis (Fennell, ) immediately or later from their actions are known as reciprocal altruists (Trivers, ). Yet most of the (Western) literature focuses on promoting benefits for the self out of behaving sustainably (e.g., Hardeman, Font, & Nawijn, ; Malone, McCabe, & Smith, ; Wehrli et al, ), although both its morality and feasibility have been questioned (Canavan, ; Kilbourne & Pickett, ; Smith, ), as exemplified in relation to Paraskevaidis and Andriotis' () study on volunteer tourism. Hence, it may be time to understand the potential of selfless prosustainability acts better.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influencing altruistic tourist behaviour: Persuasive communication to affect attitudes and self‐efficacy beliefs

Shahzalal

Journal of Tourism Research

2018

This article studies the determinants of altruistic behaviour in a collectivistic country. A focus group discussion identified the determinants and their causal relationships. Partial least square and covariance‐based structural equation modelling provide similar results in 605 questionnaires, which support the model's fit. The tourists are likely to perform more altruistic behaviours if they are exposed to persuasive communication that enhances self‐efficacy beliefs, more than communication tapping into one's sustainability attitudes. The study shows the potential of focusing on altruistic messages in a collectivistic country (Bangladesh) in comparison to the individualistic messages typically shown to be more persuasive in Western countries.

“…those highlighting benefits for the consumer and those asking the consumer to not do something bad (Truong & Hall, 2017), can be effective, despite the evidence that negatively framed messages turn off less environmentally conscious consumers (Huang, Cheng, Chuang, & Kuo, 2016). Studies in this issue provide specific examples of how to frame messages in a way to achieve better outcomes and choices, building on a nascent literature in tourism (Hardeman, Font, & Nawijn, 2017;Villarino & Font, 2015;Wehrli et al, 2014).…”

Section: The Market Development Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This special issue attempts to study in more detail the effectiveness of different social marketing interventions (Villarino & Font, 2015;Wehrli et al, 2014). We have learned so far that sustainability messages that appear overly moralising are off-putting to consumers.…”

Section: The Market Development Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and marketing in tourism: its contexts, paradoxes, approaches, challenges and potential

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

McCabe

2017

274

136

Tourism marketing has typically been seen as exploitative and fuelling hedonistic consumerism. Sustainability marketing can, however, use marketing skills and techniques to good purpose, by understanding market needs, designing more sustainable products and identifying more persuasive methods of communication to bring behavioural change. This article summarises the latest research on the theories, methods and results of marketing that seeks to make tourist destinations better places to live in, and better places to visit. It explores sustainability marketing's two fundamental approaches, that of market development, using market segmentation, and that of sustainable product development. It introduces a Special Issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism on sustainable marketing, sharing evidence on the motivations, mechanisms and barriers that businesses encounter, and on successes in changing consumer behaviour and pursuing sustainability goals. Particular attention is given to the methodologies of sustainable tourism marketing, to the subject's breadth and complexity, and to its many innovations. Further research is called for to fully understand what contextual aspects influence these prosustainability interventions to achieve which outcomes in other settings, in order to validate some of the exploratory studies discussed, and establish the feasibility of scaling up pilot studies for more general use.