Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
environmental awareness, and the alleged emergence of green consumerism
in general, has led to more appropriate styles of tourism consumption in parti-
cular. Certainly, since the late 1960s, environmental concern has become, and
continues to be, one of the most widespread social and political issues (Lowe &
RĂ¼dig, 1986); as Macnaghten and Urry (1998) observe, surveys in both the
United States and the UK indicate that public concern over environmental
issues continued to increase during the 1990s, although becoming relatively
less important compared with other issues. Also, this concern appears to
have been translated into people's buying habits. Green consumerism first
appeared during the latter half of the 1980s (Zimmer et al. , 1994) and rapidly
gained support with, for example, Elkington and Hailes' book, The Green
Consumer , published in 1988, selling over 300,000 copies.
Nevertheless, some would argue that green consumerism has been a pass-
ing fad, although some surveys suggest otherwise. For example, it has been
found that, between 1990 and 1994, the numbers of people who considered
themselves to be either 'dark green' (i.e. 'always or as far as possible buy
environmentally friendly products') or 'pale green' (i.e. 'buy if I see them')
consumers both increased, together representing 63% of those questioned
(Mintel, 1994). A subsequent survey by the same organisation (Mintel, 2007)
found that green consumerism was continuing to become more widespread,
although, significantly, consumers are more likely to buy environmentally
friendly products to feel good about themselves rather than for altruistic
reasons. Indeed, a more recent study revealed that people who are exposed
to green products, such as looking at them on a website, subsequently behave
more altruistically than those who actually buy the products. The implica-
tion of this study was that the act of purchasing may make people feel that
they have 'done their good deed' and thus may act less altruistically when
presented with other ethical dilemmas (Mazar & Zhong, 2010).
Importantly, however, there remains 'an elusive understanding'
(Smil, 1993) of the cause, effect and public response to global environmental
problems. Research has increasingly demonstrated that it is not possible to
associate green consumer behaviour with particular social groupings (Young,
1991), and that such behaviour is unlikely to remain constant over time or
be applied to all forms of consumption. In short, consumers address environ-
mental issues in complex and ambivalent ways (Macnaghten & Urry, 1998)
and, as a result, their consumer behaviour is frequently contradictory. For
example, despite about 90% of people in the UK believing that the country-
side is an important part of British heritage and should be protected at all
costs (Countryside Commission, 1996), over 80% of tourist visits to the country-
side are made by car, a proportion that has in more recent years remained
constant. Thus, despite the large number of surveys suggesting widespread
green consumerism in principle, it has been observed that up to one half of
those who claim to embrace green values never transfer these beliefs into
their consumer behaviour; 'despite the earlier evidence of high levels of
Search WWH ::




Custom Search