O ESTADO DA ARTE DA TEORIA DE NUDGE E O ESTÍMULO DE COMPORTAMENTOS TURÍSTICOS PRÓ-AMBIENTAIS: Uma revisão sistemática da literatura internacional
Authors: Souza-Neto Valério 
Published: March 2022

Tourists can harm the environment of the destination they visit in many different ways, such as using disposable products, consuming excess water and energy, not reusing towels in accommodation facilities, avoiding recycling, among other ways. The urgent need to protect destination environments from tourist misbehaviour has led academic experts and public and private managers to implement initiatives that help change human behaviour. Behavioural Economics (BE) contributes to the formulation of public and private policies that reduce these environmental damages, given that they increase explanatory power by applying psychological foundations to policies, and therefore, its use is increasing in the tourism industry. The nudging agenda. i.e., behavioural interventions that aim to improve decision-making without curbing other options are converging with tourism managers and legislators as they realise that the implementation of nudges leads to cost reductions and greater effectiveness behavioural changes, thus reducing the environmental damage produced by tourists. However, little effort has been made to understand the relationship between nudges and tourism sustainability. To fill this gap, this article systematises the literature on nudge interventions in tourism and sustainability studies, through the following steps: (1) definition of the research question; (2) formulation of review protocols; (3) literature search; (4) extraction of relevant publications; and (5) synthesize the results. For analysis, we used the support of VOSViewer, R (with the Bibliometrix package) and NVivo software, having adopted a descriptive analysis and a thematic analysis of the data. The results of this investigation present the main disciplinary background used in these investigations, with Anglo-Saxon countries leading research on green nudges. The methodological approach adopted by the nudge studies is limited and causal evidence is lacking. Thematic analysis categorizes interventions and supports the idea that nudges target unconscious and conscious behaviours. The preferred interventions are those with low-cost applications, such as bed linen reuse. Social norms are the main trigger for developing hypotheses and designing nudges. This investigation also introduces mediators and moderators of pro-environmental behaviours (PEB) and develops a model for designing nudges in the tourism industry. This research contributes to the literature by offering a systematic review of studies on nudges and a conceptual model of nudge to reduce the environmental damage produced by tourist activities. The present dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships, perspectives, methods, and context of the studies, thus tracking consistent aspects related to tourism. Furthermore, in the absence of a consolidated framework, this research will serve as a reference to support future research when planning incentive interventions in the tourism sector. This review does not aim to solve the problem of sustainability as a whole but rather to contribute to reducing the damage of tourism activities, analysing how nudge can make concrete, objective, and measurable changes.