Understanding Preferences for Nature Based and Sustainable Tourism: The Role of Personal Values and General and Specific Environmental Attitudes

IntroductionTourism is a resource-consuming activity which contributes around 5% to global (CO2) emissions (UNWTO, 2007). "The huge infrastructural and resource demands of tourism (e.g., water consumption, waste generation and energy use) can have severe impacts upon local communities and the environment" (Shah et al., 2002). For these reasons many international organisations have been supporting the development of sustainable forms of tourism, that is, forms of tourism which lead to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems (WTTC and UNWTO, 1996; Bramwell and Lane, 1993). Various studies have suggested the application of marketing strategies able to increase the overall demand (i.e. market request) for these forms of tourism. These strategies are typically based on the identification of different typologies of tourist on the base of, for example, their preferences and expectations and on planning vacations able to meet the needs of each category identified (for eg. Archer and Wearing, 2002; Dolnicar and Leisch, 2008; Gilmore and Simmons, 2007). However, increasing people's interest in these forms of tourism and obtain their satisfaction is only part of the problem. In particular, in a more comprehensive perspective, tourists' preferences and expectations should be relevant not only as factors affecting the overall tourism demand, but also as aspects influencing the sustainability of the individual's choices during the vacation (once on site) and after the vacations (once back home). Nevertheless, little is known about which factors can prompt people to endorse social and environmental responsibility while making their tourism choices before, during and after the vacation, while their educational needs in this sense are rarely addressed. Studies in environmental psychology have suggested that people's general pro-environmental attitudes and values tend to play a role in directly or indirectly prompting sustainable behaviours in various domains (Bamberg and Moser, 2007; Steg et al., 2014; Stern and Dietz, 1994). Moreover, the literature showed the importance of considering the specific attitudes towards the target behaviour or issue (Staats, 2003). In the tourism domain, only a few studies have addressed the role of environmental attitudes and values on sustainable tourism choices, while no study has, for example, investigated the possible role of the specific attitudes towards sustainable tourism, defined here as the individual's willingness to endorse social and environmental responsibilities while on holiday. Hence, it would be sensible to reach a deeper understanding of the role of these factors in people's sustainable tourism preferences and choices and use them in order to forecast their educational needs concerning sustainability in tourism. The manuscript will discuss the way in which environmental psychology can contribute to overcome the limits of the marketing literature on sustainable tourism and disentangle the role of the various motivational factors involved in sustainable tourism choices.From Sustainable Tourism to Ecotourism: Balancing Ideal Programmatic Definitions with the Need of Practical ApplicationsOne of the most cited definitions of sustainable tourism was provided by the World Tourism Organization which sees it as "tourism which leads to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems" (WTTC and UNWTO, 1996; see also Bramwell and Lane, 1993). Implicit in this view is the idea that sustainable tourism is alternative to mass tourism which causes dangerous imbalances in the tourism/environment system. While, at the beginning, the aim of sustainable tourism was to reduce such imbalances to zero, later on, many academics expressed their skepticism as to whether the competition among the various components of the tourism/environment system could be actually reduced. …