Intentions to make sustainable tourism choices: do value orientations, time perspective, and efficacy beliefs explain individual differences?

Abstract

There is a growing literature addressing psychological variables that can be associated with choices of environmentally sustainable tourism alternatives. This paper contributes to this literature by focusing on individual differences in value orientations (i.e. egoistic values, altruistic values, and biospheric values), time perspective (i.e. consideration of immediate consequences and consideration of future consequences), and efficacy beliefs (i.e. self-efficacy and collective efficacy). A cross-sectional survey (N = 385) was carried out to investigate the role of each of these psychological variables in explaining intentions to choose environmentally sustainable travel options. Overall results showed that value orientations, time perspective, and efficacy beliefs together contributed to explaining about 53% of the variance in behavioural intentions. Consideration of future consequences and collective efficacy showed the strongest associations with behavioural intentions. Implications of these findings for research and managerial practice are noted.