Jackie Clarke, Rebecca Hawkins and Victoria Waligo
Introduction
Tourism is an amalgam of different interests weaving together both private sector and public sector organizations and initiatives. It is a criss-cross of sector businesses and organizations (attractions, accommodation, hospitality, activities, events, aviation, other modes of transport such as trains, ferries, hire car services etc.), of scales of businesses from the micro-enterprises of families to the big multinationals, and of levels of destination from local areas of distinctive character to national countries and cross-border regions. Tourism relies on an integration of resources, built, natural, cultural and human (as hosts or residents) in a way not paralleled in non-tourism products, and the costs of these resources are largely not shouldered by its tourists or users. This fundamental nature of tourism – its intrinsic interdependence and its external costs – has ensured that sustainability has long been debated and practical action sought through the lens of different disciplines and stakeholder groups. For example, tourism planners have long recognised the positive and negative impacts of tourism on the social, physical and economic systems (see, for example, de Kadt 1979; Mathieson and Wall 1982) and the stakeholder approach of community-based planning as championed by Murphy (1985).
An appreciation of tourism as perceived by different disciplines enriches the discussion of the interface between sustainability and marketing for responsible tourism. Tourism has been criticized for taking too narrow and introverted a view of sustainable development (e.g. Hall, 2005) and marketing has been criticized for being ‘functionalist, anthropocentric and consumerist’
in failing to respond to the wider goals of society (Varey 2010: 120). Tourism has been portrayed as both part problem and part solution, as both vector and victim (United Nations World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] 2007), in this bigger picture of sustainable development.
This chapter draws on contributions from marketing, tourism studies, tourism marketing, sustainable development and sustainable marketing (plus other related nomenclatures) and from the reports of practitioners and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). It cannot be comprehensive nor delineate the numerous controversies, but draws attention to their existence within a chapter that seeks to be an introduction to this far reaching and argumentative topic.
Within this proviso, the chapter sets out the language, issues and conceptualization of sustainability and the reasons for business involvement in responsible tourism before moving on to examine
the macromarketing perspective, the behaviour of tourists as responsible consumers, and marketing theory and practice for responsible tourism.
Two revered commentators outside of tourism marketing provide memorable and thought-provoking insights to form part of the bigger picture on which this chapter relies. Their contribution is brought to the fore in a tourism and hospitality context by Hawkins and Bohdanowicz (2012) to draw attention to the immensity of the global challenge within which tourism plays its part. The fi rst commentator, Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman (2008), drew three parallels between the current economic crisis and the impending environmental crisis. Friedman highlighted the common characteristics of a huge increase in debt (in the case of the environmental crisis, the drawdown of natural capital), an over-confi dence in the ability of markets and regulatory systems to both identify and to alleviate risks, and the dominance of incentives driving individuals and organizations to pursue short-term benefi ts irrespective of the long term implications. The second commentator, scientist James Lovelock (2010) and originator of the Gaia theory in the 1960s, highlighted the importance of complexity in the environmental crisis and the role of ‘good’ sceptics in holding scientifi c research to account. Lovelock emphasized his belief that human society and humanity itself had not yet ‘evolved’ to a level clever enough to successfully manage a situation so complex as climate change. Such contributions from Friedman and Lovelock bring to life for the reader the limitations of too parochial a view of sustainability, marketing and responsible tourism.
There has been a proliferation of terminology for both tourism and marketing in the context of sustainability. There is variety in nuance, in accepted usage, and in the time period during which these terms were favoured and subsequently critiqued. Even implicit ownership of the terms varied.
For example, the rise of alternative tourism, green tourism and ecotourism were associated with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and predominantly positioned in opposition to mass tourism (Clarke 1997), a now largely historic view as sustainability is generally agreed to be the aspirational goal for all forms of tourism. Thus the lexicon includes alternative tourism, community-based tourism, ecotourism, fair trade tourism, green tourism, pro-poor tourism, responsible tourism, sustainable tourism and more recently (Hall 2011) de-growth tourism, slow tourism and steady-state tourism. Marketing too has generated terminology from ecological marketing in the early 1970s (see Van Dam and Apeldorm 1996) and then in very approximate succession and amongst others to green marketing (e.g. Charter 1992; Peattie 1992), environmental marketing (e.g.
Coddington 1993), societal marketing, sustainable marketing (e.g. Fuller 1999; Van Dam and Apeldorm 1996), responsible marketing (e.g. Hudson and Miller 2005), quality of life marketing, social marketing as applied to sustainability (Peattie and Peattie 2009), welfare marketing (Varey 2010) and the emergence of the transformative consumer research (TCR) movement.
The position taken in this chapter inclines towards the language of responsibility; responsible business, responsible tourism and responsible marketing, without jettisoning the language of sustainability which provides its context. The term ‘sustainability’ has been critiqued for poor translation in the marketplace as being too overwhelming for individuals to act on, inducing numbness and inactivity and a sense of inevitability. Conversely, it is argued that the term
‘responsibility’ implies a sense of ownership of sustainability that stimulates ability, motivation and action towards better lifestyle choices. It is currently a term under the favoured spotlight although, like its forerunners, there is no blueprint for its success.
Synopsis of issues and conceptualization
The issues encompassed by sustainability are remorseless in number and interlocking, and as presented here, illustrative rather than comprehensive. Included are poverty, inequality (both
Sustainability and responsible tourism inter-generational and intra-generational), disparities and growth in ecological footprint, environmental degradation and depletion and damage to fi nite or fragile resources, climate change, accumulation of chemicals and waste disposal. For example, Middleton and Hawkins (1998) highlighted the specifi cs of population growth, global warming and the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, acid rain, deforestation, desertifi cation, and the pollution and depletion of water resources. Porritt (2005) draws our attention to the depletion of fossil fuels, extreme climatic events, damage to coral reefs and wetlands, soil erosion and the salinization of agricultural land and the loss of biodiversity; also the disparities in access across the world to resources such as clean water, food, fuel and the provision of health care. These latter issues are captured at the higher level by notions of distributive and social justice. An examination of world maps (www.worldmapper.org, a collaborative project based at the University of Sheffi eld) vividly demonstrates the disparities amongst the global population in any number of categories, for example, in terms of purchasing power, production of greenhouse gases, pollution and hazardous waste, or ecological footprint. The maps displaying tourism such as the origin of tourists, tourism expenditures and tourism profi t illustrate the inequalities across the global population in the rights, access and ability to travel for leisure purposes. In all cases, the shape of countries and regions appear grossly distorted to our eyes accustomed and attuned to seeing maps of the world presented according to land mass.
This jumble of illustrative issues can be subordinated into the three pillars of sustainable development, namely the environmental pillar, the social pillar and the economic pillar. These three pillars of sustainable development also underpin the thinking behind corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the so-called Triple Bottom Line. Many landmark events and confer-ence reports have moulded our understanding of sustainable development and responsibility from the initial wake-up calls (e.g. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962) through the well-embedded contributions of the Brundtland Report (1987) ‘Our Common Future’ and United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or the Earth Summit (1992) to, say, the International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations in Cape Town 2002 which examined the guiding principles for economic responsibility, social responsibility and for environmental responsibility, the Copenhagen Earth Summit in 2009 and the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012. In recognition of this improvement in understanding and call for action, professional marketing bodies such as the UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing and the American Marketing Association have also sought to realign marketing to the Triple Bottom Line approach.
Why do businesses buy into responsible tourism?
The reasons why businesses buy into responsible tourism gives insight into the potential gap between the conceptualisation, international agreements and documentation of sustainability, and the on-the-ground marketing practice of specifi c tourism businesses across the different industry sectors. Towards the end of the 1990s, Middleton and Hawkins (1998) discussed ten reasons for business involvement with sustainability. They gave consideration to legal compliance and the advantages to businesses of moving ahead of statutory requirements, the reduction of operational costs through the implementation of effective environmental management systems (a popular argument with businesses to ‘sell’ more responsible practice), and compliance with investors’ funding criteria and investment risk reduction. From a communications angle, legal compliance and anticipatory developments in environmental performance enabled businesses to minimize and even avoid negative PR and the accompanying damage to brand, goodwill and reputation. Strong performance in sustainability also yielded benefi ts for strategic competitive
advantage over others in the marketplace; marketing advantage could also be achieved through recognition in, or membership of, various green award schemes. In line with marketing as a consumer-focused management practice, business commitment to sustainability was also seen as meeting changing customer expectations and demands regarding improvements in an organization’s environmental and social performance.
Aside from consumers, the interdependence of tourism at destination level also encouraged businesses to maintain good-neighbourhood policies with other stakeholder groups, such as residents and local non-tourism businesses; another reason highlighted by Middleton and Hawkins (1998) for business engagement with sustainability. The fi nal three reasons comprised ensuring compliance with business to business procurement policies (for example, for an hotel, ensuring that the hotel met the responsible business criteria of a specifi c tour operator in order to become one of its preferred suppliers), meeting responsible membership criteria to join trade associations and tourist boards, and fi nally, the better conservation of business assets and resources over the longer term. Some 15 years later, the ten reasons proposed by Middleton and Hawkins (1998) still resonate, with Goodwin (2011) emphasising the building of trust, reputation and customer loyalty, and the lifting of employee morale amidst similar reasons for business engagement with the sustainability agenda.
The macromarketing perspective
It is also important to move beyond the managerial perspective of marketing to better challenge its precepts and conduct. For example, social marketing claims ‘a grander vision’ for what mar-keting is about than the classic generation of transactions by placing the quest for behavioural change at the heart of marketing (Andreasen 2003: 299). In this section we examine the contri-bution of macromarketing to our knowledge of sustainability and marketing for responsible tourism. Macromarketing addresses how micromarketing – or managerial level marketing – impacts on society, how society infl uences the broader macro-system and how these two systems interact. On this basis, sustainability becomes very much part of the macromarketing territory and ripe for investigation.
At the core of this way of thinking about marketing is the concept of the dominant social paradigm (DSP). The DSP is the set of norms, values, beliefs and behaviours that form the most commonly held world view or mindset within a culture. It is pervasive to the point that people scarcely notice or query the infl uence of the DSP on their daily lives. The DSP within which our lives are organized in Western societies is one driven by the imperatives of capitalism, economic growth and the accumulation of wealth, and the values of consumerism, individualism and dominance over nature in an anthropocentric value system (Emery 2012; Kilbourne 1998;
Kilbourne, McDonagh and Prothero 1997; Varey 2010). It is argued that the reinventions of marketing for sustainability have operated within this DSP even if the intention was to make
‘sweeping and substantive changes’ (Kilbourne 2010: 109). Recently experts in consumer behaviour have written of consumerism experiencing ‘a period of well-earned malaise’ and that
‘the future of global consumption must remain the object of questioning on economic, cultural, environmental and moral grounds’ (Gabriel and Lang 2006: 5). Despite the debates, calls to action and minority alternative lifestyles, consumption as a way of life remains the driving principle of the Western DSP (Varey 2010: 115).
Thomas Friedman as cited in our opening salvo referred to the prevalence of short-term incentives driving people and businesses towards short-term benefi ts to the detriment of the longer term. This touches on Hardin’s (1968) classic tragedy of the commons as iterated in the tourism (e.g. Goodwin 2011) and the marketing (e.g. Polonsky 2011) literature. Because
Sustainability and responsible tourism no-one owns the shared communal space (i.e. the commons – for example the quality of the natural environment in all its aspects), no individual is motivated to protect it. Every individual behaves according to their personal interests and benefi ts, yet these personal interests and benefi ts may be in opposition to the wider interests of society. For example, it may be in the interests of the individual to take a short haul fl ight for a weekend break (rest, relaxation, sense of adventure, exploration, self-development, time out with the family etc.) but not for society and the natural environment (fuel emissions, air quality, noise pollution, waste generation at the destination, fresh water consumption etc.). The problem lies not with the behaviour of a solitary individual but in the multiplication of these individuals in their thousands and millions. Thus the tragedy of the commons draws attention to the calamity of the accumulation of self-interested individual behaviour and its inherent destruction of the value of shared resources, spaces and environments.
It highlights the inherent confl ict between benefi ts for the individual (person or business) and the wider goals of society including those for the natural environment (Polonsky 2011). Over time we have evolved to see ourselves as a consumer society, and with individual identities as consumers rather than as citizens. But consumers, unlike citizens, hold no obligations to other consumers (Varey 2010) and there is no intrinsic collective responsibility so that the sense of unity is eroded. Hall and Brown (2006: 62) contend that the morality of self-interest has acquired considerable social legitimacy in our way of living today and that this is refl ected in the decline of once strong moral authorities such as church, community, family and State.
The macromarketing commentary on sustainability is one that largely rejects change within the current systems and seeks transformative change – to the DSP and its systems, norms and values, and to the behaviour of individuals and businesses within this new order. In doing so, it questions the degree to which sustainability can be achieved within existing Western mindsets and behaviours, both for consumers and for businesses. The commentators on macromarketing are unafraid to illuminate the essential quarrels between consumption, marketing and the quest for sustainability; an illumination of importance that extends to tourism as much as to any other product category. Our DSP is rooted in unremitting consumption (the imperative for continuous economic growth) and marketing has evolved as one of society’s mechanisms for delivering this.
Thus for marketing academics and practitioners, sustainability becomes ‘the elephant in the marketing living room’ (Kilbourne 2010: 110). This thinking within tourism is echoed in the emergence of de-growth tourism (Hall 2011) and its ilk (the slow tourism movement;
steady-state tourism; and proposals for no tourism). These, in essence, argue for an alternative interpretation of sustainable development from the balancing of environmental, social and economic concerns to one insistent on prioritizing the need to conserve natural capital (Hall 2011), a seismic shift to a new order.
The behaviour of tourists as responsible consumers
The behaviour of tourists in the context of sustainability extends beyond the consumption practice of buying greener tourism products to behaviours relating to responsible consumption, consumption reduction (fewer tourist trips), voluntary simplicity and sustainable lifestyles.
A review of consumer behaviour and demand responses of tourists to climate change noted the large adaptive capacity of tourists as consumers to substitute destination, timing and type of holiday, creating shifts in macro-demand for different destinations and patterns of tourist migration fl ows between countries as tempered by varying cultural perceptions of climatic attractiveness (Gossling, Scott, Hall, Ceron and Dubois 2012). For example, British tourists are drawn towards climates with average daytime temperatures of about 290C (Benfi eld UCL Hazard Research Centre 2007) so by 2030 the level of physical comfort for British tourists in
Southern Europe will be a problem. How will such climate change impact on the traditional North–South fl ow of tourism for European summer holiday destinations? How will tourists alter their behaviour and patterns of movement?
Three trends are suggested by the Benfi eld UCL Hazard Research Centre (2007). Firstly, that there will be a switch in the timing of Mediterranean holidays from the hot summer months to the winter and shoulder months of autumn and spring. This change in pattern will call into question the structures of Northern European societies with regard to educational cycles and the timings of breaks in the educational and working calendar. Secondly, that tourists will increasingly choose not to visit the large Mediterranean cities so as to avoid both the ‘heat island’ effect (such cities are typically 1–20C hotter than the surrounding countryside) and the deteriorating air quality. Thirdly, that there will be greater fl ows of summer tourists to mountains and other more temperate destinations. This European example is but one illustration. Other regions of the world face other and related challenges. India and islands such as Goa, Maldives and the Seychelles benefi t economically from tourism yet confront the problems of potentially more powerful cyclones, erosion and loss of beaches, fl ooding of coastal zones and inland areas, damage and loss of coral reefs, and even perhaps evacuation of some islands (Maldives) because of saltwater penetrating the aquifers and freshwater supplies (Benfi eld UCL Hazard Research Centre 2007).
As yet, the adaptive capacity of tourists in response to climate change and the challenges it poses across the globe is insuffi ciently understood (Gossling et al. 2012).
At a micro-level, the complexities of tourism compared to many other common product categories make responsible choices diffi cult for the would-be tourist. This section pinpoints some of these tensions. It is also useful to note at this point Peattie and Crane’s (2005) warning of the problems of sustainability research based on hypothetical situations. The use of hypothetical scenarios (such as hypothetical statements of responsible tourism and the respondent’s ‘intention/
likelihood to purchase’ in relation to price of the holiday) which typically are designed into questionnaire instruments or experiments create opportunities for unrealistic yet socially desirable responses. A respondent might claim that they would pay a higher price for a responsible tourism product because this is the ‘feel good’ answer. The reality – as evidenced by other data – suggests a different pattern of actual tourist behaviour. The cautionary note on such methodological weaknesses helps prevent naïve interpretation of the fi ndings.
On the positive side, consumer empowerment enabled by Web 2.0 technologies, social media and mobile technologies have given impetus to the ability of consumers to act together to drive the sustainability agenda. Such collective behaviour gives new energy to boycotts of tourism brands or destinations perceived as falling short on responsibility (the ‘stick’) and to ‘buycotts’ for those perceived as deserving of encouragement (the ‘carrot’). Flashmobs were used by consumers as part of the mass demonstrations in 2008 against the expansion of Heathrow Terminal Five.
Conversely, the aptly named carrotmob.org which started in America harnesses the power of collective spend to reward businesses (such as local restaurants) for their actual or promised environmental performance. However, making good responsible choices in tourism is diffi cult even for those with the time and inclination to try. We have encapsulated this problem of consumer behaviour as ‘tourist confusion’.
Tourist confusion
There are three components (complexity, certifi cation, cynicism) that contribute to tourist confusion in respect of sustainability and responsible choices. Firstly, there is the complexity of tourism itself and how individuals ‘trade-off ’ one sub-decision against another. It is in the nature of tourism that tourists seeking responsible choices have to trade-off sub-decisions about
Sustainability and responsible tourism accommodation, attractions and activities, restaurants, excursion providers, perhaps inclusive tour providers (and other service providers that contribute to the total tourism experience such as car hire, fi nancial services and so forth), as well as decisions about destination and mode of travel for arrival and departure. To do so with any accuracy requires knowledge about the respective corporate social responsibility, certifi cation schemes or equivalent programmes. There might also be comparisons to be made between the respective environmental impacts, social impacts and economic impacts. Is it better to fl y to a long haul ecotourism destination where you have close economic and social contact with the host community, or is it better to take the train and stay in locally owned accommodation within your own country (domestic tourism)? How does the intended length of stay affect the consequences of the decision? Even with the inclination, ability and access to all the required information for a responsible choice (a doubtful proposition) and assuming a rational decision process (also a doubtful proposition), making a robust decision for sustainability is a taxing task (Bowen and Clarke 2009). Even the ‘most dedicated green consumer’ is likely to be ‘confused and disempowered’ by the complexity of information to be considered (Sustainable Development Commission 2006: 15). To compound the problem, the level of environmental literacy amongst most consumers is low (Peattie and Crane 2005) and has been described as ill-informed and highly polarized (Gossling et al. 2012).
Secondly, the proliferation of ecolabels and tourism certifi cation schemes designed to guide responsible tourism decisions aids and abets the confusion. Better established examples of these schemes include Blue Flag (international; beaches and marinas), Green Globe (international), Green Tourism Business Scheme (UK), Legambiente Tourismo (Italy), Certifi cation for Sustainable Tourism (Costa Rica) and the Nature and Ecotourism Accreditation Program (NEAP; Australia). However, poor consumer recognition of many ecolabels and tourism cer-tifi cation schemes, in particular, what they stand for, and whether they are based on self-certifi cation or independent verifi cation, suggests such schemes currently do not deliver strong and unambiguous market value.
Thirdly, there is the prevailing and long standing sense of consumer cynicism and distrust of green claims across all product categories (National Consumer Council 1996; Peattie and Crane 2005), from which tourism is not exempt. In the United Kingdom, around 90 per cent of consumers distrust the green information communicated by businesses and government (Futerra 2008). Greenwashing, consisting of unsubstantiated or irrelevant environmental claims made by organizations, gives rise to consumer complaints. As an illustration, in the United Kingdom in 2007, holiday and travel companies totalled 9.5 per cent of the greenwash complaints made by consumers to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (Futerra 2008). Part of the problem may lie with the complex nature of tourism itself. A tourism business might be very active in marketing for responsible tourism but the trade-offs between environmental, social and economic concerns at different levels (local, regional, national), for different components (the business location and departure points, during travel, at the destination) and for the wider supplier and distributor networks means that it is easy to criticise a tourism business for things that it hasn’t got right rather than acknowledging the many things that it has achieved. This is especially true when you consider the wide range of consumer views and stances held on what sustainability and its implementation really means. Highlighting the negative may serve to fuel overall consumer cynicism and distrust.
The value-action gap
Labelled the value-action gap by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC 2006) and as the attitude-behaviour gap by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) (2008), this discrepancy
between behavioural inclination and reality is a recognized phenomenon for sustainability and consumer behaviour. Hall and Brown (2006) allude to the gap when discussing the rhetoric of buying responsible tourism products set against the common desire for low prices and convenience. A UK research study found the majority of respondents willing to pay more for a holiday if the money went to responsible initiatives; however, the co-authors noted that the views were aspirational rather than concrete behaviours (Goodwin and Francis 2003). Research by the British Air Transport Association found 56 per cent of people claimed concern about the environmental impacts of air travel, but only 13 per cent had changed their travel behaviours to refl ect these concerns (Sustainable Aviation Council 2006). There is complementary industry evidence to suggest that sustainable and responsible holidays make up a small percentage of total sales (Bowen and Clarke 2009; Thomson Future Holiday Forum 2004).
Of the pro-environmental consumer behaviours sought by the UK government, the avoidance of unnecessary short haul fl ights has been highlighted as one type of behaviour characterized by limited adoption amongst the UK population yet of signifi cant CO2 impact (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 2008). Since the widespread availability and growth of fl ights to holiday and short break destinations in the post-war era for developed country populations (in itself raising issues of equity across the global population), such tourists have come to regard fl ying as part of their lifestyles and normal behaviour patterns and this behaviour is entrenched. Research by Target Group Index (2008) found that although 2 per cent of the population of France, America and the UK could be labelled as ‘eco-adopters’ exhibiting many pro-environmental behaviours and values, for personal travel these eco-adopters had personal carbon footprints larger than the average. For example, French eco-adopters were 63 per cent more likely than average to have taken three or four fl ights a year, whilst American eco-adopters were 122 per cent more likely to be members of a frequent fl ier scheme (TGI 2008).
There is some criticism of endorsing strategies for behavioural transformation based on encouragement of small changes in behaviour (recycling, re-using, adoption of energy effi cient products etc.) which have some track record of success with an accompanying belief in the overspill effect into larger and more diffi cult changes such as reduction in fl ight consumption (WWF 2008). The criticism runs that in reality there is less of an overspill effect and more of a compensation effect. The rationale for the individual follows the line that because as an individual they engage with recycling, re-using and using energy effi cient products in and around their home, they can continue to fl y because this is supposedly counterbalanced by their environmental behaviour in their home environment. This is the compensation effect but consumer belief in its effi cacy is misplaced. It is apparent that motivation, or the driving force behind behaviour, is an important factor to take into account for sustainability and marketing for responsible tourism.
The question of motivation
A distinction is drawn between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation for more sustainable consumption. Intrinsic motivation aligning behaviour with affi liation, community feeling, emotional intimacy and personally held pro-environmental values is argued to be a more powerful driver than extrinsic motivation with its emphasis on social recognition, self-interest, materialism and fi nancial gain (Common Cause Research 2012; WWF 2008). If consumers change their behaviours on a cost-saving appeal (for example, the savings on home insulation or energy effi cient bulbs), the evidence suggests they are less likely to switch, for example, from a low cost fl ight to the Mediterranean to taking the more expensive option of the train. If changes in behaviour stem from intrinsic motivation and the belief in doing environmental good, then the fl ight-to-train switch becomes more likely. This argument suggests that the motivation that
Sustainability and responsible tourism lies behind the behaviour is important and that responsible tourist behaviour is best encouraged through developing pro-environmental values as part of intrinsic motivation.
Common motivators for pro-environmental behaviour stressed by Defra (2008) and covering both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation included the ‘feel good’ factor, individual benefi ts such as health or fi nancial outlay, ease of behaviour, social norms and being ‘part of something bigger’. A sense of equity and fairness felt by individuals comparing themselves to other members of society has been shown to be important (National Endowment for Science Technology and Arts [NESTA] 2008; Sustainable Development Commission 2006). Individual tourists are more likely to change their behaviours to more responsible choices if they believe others to be doing the same, a spirit of collective behavioural change eventually embedding in the social norm. Common barriers to behavioural change are also insightful, including external constraints such as working patterns and demands on time, but also ingrained behavioural habit, consumer scepticism and feelings of disempowerment (Defra 2008).
Marketing for responsible tourism
Having discussed the controversies of marketing at the macro-level, we focus here on marketing at the micro-level, as a management discipline and as practised by marketing professionals within tourism organizations. The strategic case for destinations to use marketing to spatially and temporally spread and disperse tourists, their associated benefi ts, and to mitigate their negative impacts, to increase length of stay as opposed to driving up trip numbers, to inform segmentation decisions according to responsible behaviour patterns and to encourage domestic tourism is well documented across both the tourism planning and tourism marketing literature. De-marketing has also received attention as a strategic tool to relieve detrimental pressure on the environmental capacity at honeypot or otherwise fragile destinations (e.g. Beeton 2003).
For tourism businesses, much of the attention has been on the ‘greening’ (or similar terminol-ogy) of the tourism product offer across all stages of the product life cycle, often through engage-ment with certifi cation schemes, CSR and different types of partnerships. For example, the responsibility credentials of suppliers and supplier procurement policies as ‘inputs’ to the fi nished product are important decisions at the front end of the product life cycle (e.g. Schwartz, Tapper and Font 2008; Travelwatch 2006). At the opposite end of the product lifecycle, waste management and disposal are also integrated into the systems designed to engineer more respon-sible tourism products (e.g. Dileep 2007). There is now considerable expertise and specialism afforded to the different environmental components that could be said to contribute to ‘green-ing’ the tourism product offer (e.g. the three Rs, energy effi ciency, fresh water management, waste disposal, research and development into technological solutions such as biofuels etc.) so that they are rarely identifi ed in the literature as directly of marketing concern. Nonetheless the fact is that taken together they build the sustainability agenda for marketing.
Some effort has been made by tourism marketing academics to organize responsible activities in other ways. Pomering, Noble and Johnson (2011) cross-referenced an expanded marketing mix that absorbed the work of services marketers Booms and Bitner (participants, process and physical evidence) and tourism marketer Morrison (partnership, packaging and programming) against the Triple Bottom Line of sustainable development (environmental, economic and social).
Hudson and Miller (2005) in their examination of responsible tourism marketing referred to tourism businesses as inactive, reactive, exploitative (associated with greenwashing practices) or proactive according to their distribution along the two dimensions of environmentally responsible action (waste management, fuel management, community relations etc.) and environmental communications (brochures, websites, press releases and – in today’s currency – social media).
The position of a tourism business within the resulting matrix was seen as dynamic rather than fi xed, with businesses able to move between cells over time.
Interdependency between tourism businesses and others involved in tourism provision is an accepted characteristic of tourism marketing (e.g. the ‘composite product’ of Burkart and Medlik 1981: 195; Middleton 1994: 31). Marketers need to manage their supplier networks who produce the different elements of the tourism product (for example, the food suppliers to the hotel restaurant; the hotel rooms and self-catering units to the tour operator) and for the business investing in sustainability, this means using suppliers meeting certain sustainability criteria and standards. Under the auspices of social marketing, Polonsky, Carlson and Fry (2003) have proposed the ‘harm chain’ concept as a way of bringing together networks of stakeholders with Porter’s value chain as embedded in standard marketing practice to address ‘harm’ or negative consequences arising from both direct and indirect (externalities) exchanges amongst stakeholders.
Types of ‘harm’ might include carbon dioxide emissions, poor living standards of tourism and hospitality workers, or inequities in fresh water supplies. Identifi cation of ‘harm’ is the fi rst step in developing a harm chain, and subsequent steps include resolving where the harm originated, how it might be prevented and who is being harmed (Polonsky et al. 2003). The harm chain is based on four exchange-oriented stages where harm may happen, namely pre-production, production, consumption and post-consumption. The harm chain also categorizes stakeholders using the criteria of those who cause or bring about the harm, those who are harmed, and those who help in alleviating the harm. The four stages and the three stakeholder types are brought together as a matrix, the harm table (Polonsky et al. 2003). From a tourism perspective, given the inseparability of production and consumption, it may be useful to merge the stages of production and consumption to produce a harm table that is a three by three matrix.
Communication has long been the preserve of the marketing practitioner and communication for responsible behaviour is an obvious area of engagement. Alongside criticism of using cost-saving messages as habituating the wrong behaviours for responsible choices in more complex product categories (e.g. fl ying) are criticisms of fear appeals (e.g. Futerra 2005; Obermiller 1995).
The argument is that fear appeals in sustainable communications results in consumer apathy, an overwhelming feeling that little can be done, and is particularly unsuited under circumstances where the supporting infrastructure for pro-environmental behaviour (e.g. recycling facilities) are poor (Futerra 2005). Conversely, recent arguments have been made for appeals that prompt target audiences to refl ect on the importance they attach as individual consumers to intrinsic values, even if they are naturally extrinsically-oriented (Common Cause Research 2012). This appeal for refl ection is argued as being more effective than communicating systemic concern about big environmental and social issues and is partly predicated on the notion that individuals possess a greater mix of extrinsic and intrinsic values than originally believed (Common Cause Research 2012). Within communication research and the quest for responsible consumer behaviour, the rise of Web 2.0, mobile technologies and the power of social media merits attention. For example, tourism businesses devising social media network strategies and content strategies could experiment with social infl uence scores (e.g. Klout scores) for bringing on-side infl uential bloggers with expertise on sustainability, responsibility or on pro-environmental consumer behaviours.
Governments, regulatory bodies, retailers (travel agents) and tourism businesses have the strategic option of practising choice editing for responsible tourism. Choice editing is the pre-selection of products offered to consumers – under these circumstances according to sustainability criteria – and has success in various product categories (Sustainable Development Commission 2006). Applied to tourism, the goal would be to remove less responsible tourism from the possible choice sets of consumers, leaving the would-be tourist with a selection of possible