On linguistic relativity and pro-environmental attitudes in tourism

Abstract

Language is a key cultural and cognitive attribute which can shape the way people think and behave. Research in economics has tested the influence of language on human consumption and found that languages that explicitly mark future events, i.e. so-called future-timereference or strong FTR languages, may engage their speakers in less future-oriented attitudes and actions. This phenomenon is known as linguistic relativity. By applying its principles to tourism, this study investigated the impact of language on pro-environmental attitudes of tourists. Comparative analysis of Korean (strong FTR language) and Mandarin (weak FTR language) speaking tourists revealed substantial differences in attitudes. Although tourists possessed good knowledge on the environmental impacts of tourism, this knowledge did not translate into high pro-environmental attitudes for Korean speakers while it did for Mandarin.This suggests that language can shape the attitudes of tourists towards environmental impacts.Implications for management, policy-making and future research are discussed.1

Remarks From Tourism Planning and Sustainable Tourism - A Bibliometric Study

“…The concept of sustainable tourism is commonly recognized as a type of tourism focused on eco-friendly practices showing respect by the global environment, and being much more responsible (Weaver, 2014). Although, sustainability is much more than that (Gössling, 2001(Gössling, , 2002Frausto & Mota, 2015;Ruhanen, et al, 2015;Kim & Filimonau, 2017), Buckley (2012) The bibliometric analysis conducted by Ruhanen, et al (2015) Kaiser et al (2003) referred to the vital need for studying pollution levels, and the need to save energy and resources, even though environmental psychologists had conducted little research on it. Personal impacts on the environment and natural resource consumption are also important to measure.…”

“…There are tourists considering such matter as drive force of more environmentally friendly traveling decisions in benefit of the environment (Eagles & Cascagnette, 1995). Specific analysis with this focus allows us to determine the success of sustainable tourism development on a global scale (Jurowski, et al, 1995;Laroche, et al, 2002;Chiu, et al, 2014;Kim & Filimonau, 2017). Despite the recognition of the importance given to the relationship between attitude and pro-environmental tourism behaviour, there is a gap on systematic analyses or bibliometric studies addressing this issue on tourism, planning and sustainable development (Evren & Kozak, 2014).…”

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Psychological Impact of Different Grammaticalizations of the Future

“…Further, the LSH was confirmed by research concerning pro-environmental attitudes (Kim & Filimonau, 2017), environmental behavior and policies (Mavisakalyan et al, 2018) as well as future-oriented policies in general (Pérez & Tavits, 2017). Mavisakalyan et al, (2018), for example, followed Chen's (2003) setup, using panel data from the World Values Survey, finding speakers of weak FTR languages to be more willing to engage in costly pro-environmental actions, which was also evident across all countries (e.g., more climate change policies).…”

“…Mavisakalyan et al, (2018), for example, followed Chen's (2003) setup, using panel data from the World Values Survey, finding speakers of weak FTR languages to be more willing to engage in costly pro-environmental actions, which was also evident across all countries (e.g., more climate change policies). Kim and Filimonau (2017) assessed pro-environmental attitudes between Mandarin (weak FTR) and Korean (strong FTR) speakers using an online questionnaire. They found significantly higher pro-environmental attitudes in Mandarin speakers suggesting a higher perceived urgency in proenvironmental topics when speaking a weak FTR language (i.e., the future was perceived as being closer).…”

“…Usually, languages with higher degrees of FTR additionally use particular constructions with lower degrees of FTR, as seen in the French inflectional and periphrastic constructions, to express a range of probability regarding future events (Bybee et al, 1991). There are no clear criteria to identify languages with a high degree of FTR: some studies categorize periphrastic future constructions as a high degree of FTR (e.g., Dahl & Velupillai, 2013;Galor et al, 2018), whereas other studies use the general marking of the verb tense to characterize a high degree of FTR (e.g., Chen, 2013;Kim & Filimonau, 2017;Mavisakalyan et al, 2018). Future research may consider grammaticalization of the future as a continuum (e.g., Thoma & Tytus, 2018) and adapt the categorization of the degree of FTR to suit a specific research question.…”