Sociological barriers to developing sustainable discretionary air travel behaviour

Mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel is one of the most challenging aspects of society’s response to climate change. Whereas research from the transport and tourism sectors agrees that air travel emissions are a key environmental challenge, how to best address the climate impacts of discretionary air travel remains an elusive problem. Scope for further efficiency gains in aircraft emissions is declining, and there is not yet a global climate policy for international commercial aviation. Signatories of airlines in the United Kingdom, for instance, instead of choosing to transform supply or raise consumer awareness of air travel’s climate impacts, presently pin their hopes for a sustainable aviation future on technology, alternative fuels and operational innovations. In the context of industry resistance to wholesale supply changes and in the absence to date of a global market-based mechanism for aviation, such as carbon trading, the concept of encouraging voluntary public behaviour change has been presented as a mechanism for moving discretionary air travel consumption towards a more sustainable pathway. This chapter takes Barr et al.’s finding that environmental concern may not transcend “home” to the context of “away” as its departure point. Based on 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews carried out in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom, we illustrate behavioural consistencies and inconsistencies with respect to climate change amongst consumers in both everyday domestic (home) and tourism (away) practices. In contrast to Barr et al., however, we use both modern and postmodern sociological theory to explain why these seemingly contradictory consumption decisions occur. Specifically, we engage modern theory on tourism as liminoid space and postmodern theory that suggests that personal identity (and consequently behaviour) is inconsistent and performed differently across varying contexts. The findings of our research, framed within these theoretical perspectives, hold important implications for the viability of climate change mitigation strategies that rely, at least in part, on encouraging voluntary behaviour change amongst consumers