Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Representations and discourses of travel
During the 1970s and 1980s, social psychologists began to question the cog-
nitive approach which underpins much work on attitude and behaviour
research. Subsequently, alternative approaches focused on the 'socially consti-
tuted nature of environmental problems' (Kurz et al, 2005, p604). Studies
began to question the rationality of attitudes as the basis for behaviour.
One of the critiques of attitude behaviour theory stems from social repre-
sentations theory developed by the French social psychologist Moscovici
(1981). Social representations theory proposes that people draw on shared
views of the world that are constructed through social interaction, media
portrayals and actual experiences. These collective views, known as represen-
tations, are shared by group members, although people can be members of
multiple groups and may thus be exposed, through social interaction, to dif-
ferent representations in different contexts. People can therefore have access
to more than one representation of a phenomenon and draw on the represen-
tation most appropriate to a given context.
When faced with something new, such as climate change, people draw on
these widely held views to develop their understanding. As Becken (2007,
p352) puts it, 'what people know about climate change is strongly influenced
by its representation and the discourse that surrounds it'. In this way,
ideas about something that is relatively poorly understood can become suf-
fused through society as a representation; however, such representations are
predominantly socially constructed, rather than based on concrete experi-
ences. In the case of climate change, the media has had a major role in
developing understanding, but reporting can lack accuracy and may misrep-
resent uncertainty around climate change (Zehr, 2000). In this sense,
representations have also been compared to myths (Moscovici, 1981) that
circulate in society.
In a transport for tourism context, Dickinson et al (2009) have explored
the representations of transport that are diffused in a UK rural tourism desti-
nation. They found residents and visitors had limited experience of
alternatives to the car, and drew on a socially constructed reality to justify
their car use even though alternatives were available. While people were col-
lectively able to embrace public transport as a public good, and suggested they
would use it more were improvements made, observation of actual behaviour
showed little use of public transport even where reasonably frequent services
were available. A representation was found that non-car alternatives must be
improved before car use can be managed (i.e. restricted) in any way. This rep-
resentation helps justify car use even where people recognize there are
significant car-related impacts and alternatives available.
This social representations perspective is critical of cognitive attitude-
behaviour theory, in that the latter pays little attention to the ways in which
people contextualize their behaviour and draw on pervasive arguments to
justify their behaviour relevant to the particular context. Thus, far from atti-
tudes being inconsistent with behaviour, social representations theory would
suggest that attitudes are far from consistent at all. People draw on diverse
