Sustainable Tourism in the EU: A Willingness Index Based on Behavioural Intentions

Conceição Castro; Teresa Dieguez

doi:10.25145/j.pasos.2027.25.003

Autores/as

Conceição Castro CEOS.PP, ISCAP, Polytechnic of Porto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1550-5867
Teresa Dieguez https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4886-1446

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25145/j.pasos.2027.25.003

Palabras clave:

Turismo sostenible, Intenciones de comportamiento, Índice de disposición, Factores sociodemográficos, Unión Europea

Resumen

Este estudio examina la disposición de los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea (UE) a adoptar comportamientos turísticos sostenibles, utilizando datos del Flash Eurobarómetro 499. Se desarrolló un índice de disposición al comportamiento turístico sostenible (WSTB) a partir de nueve intenciones de comportamiento mediante un análisis factorial exploratorio, el cual ofrece una medida sintética y comparable de la predisposición individual hacia el viaje sostenible. Se emplearon estadísticas descriptivas y pruebas de chi-cuadrado para evaluar la variación entre género, edad, ocupación, tipo de comunidad, nacionalidad y frecuencia de viaje. Las mujeres, los jóvenes, los empleados y los viajeros frecuentes mostraron mayor tendencia a adoptar comportamientos sostenibles. Los Estados miembros de la UE fueron clasificados en función del índice WSTB: Rumanía, Suecia y Eslovaquia ocupan los primeros puestos, mientras que Bulgaria, Malta y Portugal obtienen las puntuaciones más bajas. Los resultados revelan disparidades considerables entre los Estados miembros, lo que exige políticas específicas alineadas con las características sociodemográficas y culturales de cada país para fomentar el cambio de comportamiento y unas prácticas de turismo sostenible más armonizadas entre los europeos.

Descargas

Los datos de descargas todavía no están disponibles.

Datos de publicación

Este artículo

Otros artículos

Revisores/as por pares

2

2,4

Perfil evaluadores/as N/D

Declaraciones de autoría

Disponibilidad de datos

N/D

16%

Financiación externa

No

32%

Conflictos de intereses

N/D

11%

Esta revista

Otras revistas

Artículos aceptados

55%

33%

Días para la publicación

301

145

Indexado en

DOAJ
GS
L
S

Editor y equipo editorial: Perfiles
Sociedad académica: PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural
Editorial: Instituto Universitario de Investigación Social y Turismo. Universidad de La Laguna (España) - Instituto Universitario da Maia ISMAI (Portugal)

Citas

Ahas, R., Raun, J., & Silm, S. (2024). Estonia. In J. Jafari, & H. Xiao (Eds.), Encyclopedia of tourism (pp 348-349. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74923-1_554

Bassi, F., & Martín, J. A. (2024). Drivers of sustainable tourism in Europe: How to design efficient business strategies. Quality & Quantity, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-023-01819-0

Campos, C., Laso, J., Cristóbal, J., Albertí, J., Bala, A., Fullana, M., Fullana-i-Palmer, P., Margallo, M., & Aldaco, R. (2022). Towards more sustainable tourism under a carbon footprint approach: The camino lebaniego case study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 369, 133222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133222

Ciascai, O. R., Dezsi, Ș, & Rus, K. A. (2022). Cycling tourism: A literature review to assess implications, multiple impacts, vulnerabilities, and future perspectives. Sustainability, 14(15), 8983. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14158983

Degirmenci, T., Okoth, E., & Erdem, A. (2025). Political governance and tourism development: The roles of globalisation, stability, economic growth, and taxation in top destinations. Tourism Recreation Research, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2025.2465963

Demeter, C., Fechner, D., & Dolnicar, S. (2023). Progress in field experimentation for environmentally sustainable tourism – A knowledge map and research agenda. Tourism Management, 94, 104633, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104633.

Dinan, P., & Sargeant, A. (2000). Social marketing and sustainable tourism: Is there a match? International Journal of Tourism Research, 2(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1522-1970(200001/02)2:1<1::AID-JTR178>3.0.CO;2-5

Dolnicar, S. (2004). Insights into sustainable tourists in Austria: A data-based a priori segmentation approach. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 12(3), 209-218. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669580408667234

Dolnicar, S. (2010). Identifying tourists with smaller environmental footprints. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 18(6), 717-734. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669581003668516

European Commission (2022). Flash Eurobarometer 499: Attitudes of Europeans towards tourism, Autumn 2021 (ZA7807; Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13878

Gomes, S., & Lopes, J. M. (2023). Insights for pro-sustainable tourist behavior: The role of sustainable destination information and pro-sustainable tourist habits. Sustainability, 15(11), 8856. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15118856

Gross, S., & Grimm, B. (2018). Sustainable mode of transport choices at the destination–public transport at German destinations. Tourism Review, 73(3), 401-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-11-2017-0177

Hair, J. F. J., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2018). Multivariate Data Analysis (8th ed.). Cengage Learning EMEA.

Holmes, M. R., Dodds, R., & Frochot, I. (2019). At home or abroad, does our behavior change? Examining how everyday behavior influences sustainable travel behavior and tourist clusters. Journal of Travel Research, 60(1), 102-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287519894070

Jiang, X., & Gossage, M. G. (2025). A moderated mediation model for explaining residents’ environmental and cultural responsible behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1489481. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1489481

John, E. (2020). Do tourists behave in a sustainable manner at destinations? Empirical evidence from Munnar. Materials Today: Proceedings, 33, 4866-4875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.08.399.

Juvan, E., & Dolnicar, S. (2017). Drivers of pro-environmental tourist behaviours are not universal. Journal of Cleaner Production, 166, 879–890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.08.087.

Juvan, E., & Dolnicar. S. (2014). The attitude behavior gap in sustainable tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 48, 76–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.05.012

Kaiser, H. F. (1974). An index of factorial simplicity. Psychometrika, 39, 31-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02291575

Kosmas, P., & Vatikioti, A. (2024). Beyond neoliberal tourism: A critical review. In A. Trono, V. Castronuovo, & P. Kosmas (Eds), Managing Natural and Cultural Heritage for a Durable Tourism (pp. 85-97). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52041-9_7

López-Sánchez, Y., & Pulido-Fernández, J. I. (2017). Factors influencing the willingness to pay for sustainable tourism: A case of mass tourism destinations. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 24(3), 262-275. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2016.1203372

Marôco, J. (2014). Análise estatística com o SPSS Statistics (7th ed.). Report Number.

McLoughlin, E., Maguire, K., & Hanrahan, J. (2023). Barriers to evidence-based sustainable planning for tourism: Perspectives from Ireland’s local authorities. Sustainability, 15(23), 16274. https://doi.org/10.3390/su152316274

Oliu-Barton, M., & Lopez, J. M. (2024). How much does Europe pay for clean air? (Bruegel Working Paper 15). Bruegel. https://www.bruegel.org/system/files/2024-06/WP%2015%202024.pdf

Pai, C. H., Zhang, Y., Wang, Y. L., Wang, Y., & Shang, Y. (2025). From conservation to prosperity: A quantitative study on the positive correlation between sustainable tourism practices and economic growth. Current Issues in Tourism, 28(10), 1677-1700. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2024.2362379

Passafaro, P., Cini, C., Diaco, V., Schirru, O., Boison, A., Gasparri, V., & Giannantoni, S. (2015). Understanding preferences for nature-based and sustainable tourism: The role of personal values and general and specific environmental attitudes. Current Research in Psychology, 6(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3844/crpsp.2015.1.14.

Pinho, M., & Gomes, S. (2023). Generation Z as a critical question mark for sustainable tourism–An exploratory study in Portugal. Journal of Tourism Futures, 10(3), 486-503. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-07-2022-0171

Pinho, M., & Leal, F. (2024). AI-enhanced strategies to ensure new sustainable destination tourism trends among the 27 European Union Member States. Sustainability, 16(22), 9844. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229844

Pirvu, R., Stoicea Ignătescu, D. M., Gruescu Ciobanu, R. M., & Bratu, R. Ș. (2024). Sustainable tourism in Romania: integrating economic, social and environmental dimensions. Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, 18(1), 2784-2795. https://doi.org/10.2478/picbe-2024-0232

Puciato, D., Szromek, A.R., & Bugdol, M. (2023). Willingness to pay for sustainable hotel services as an aspect of proenvironmental behavior of hotel guests. Economics and Sociology, 16(1), 106-122. https://doi.org/10.14254/2071-789X.2023/16-1/8

Rodríguez, C., Jacob, M., & Florido, C. (2020). Socioeconomic profile of tourists with a greater circular attitude and behaviour in hotels of a sun and beach destination. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(24), 9392. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249392

Romao, J., & Bi, Y. (2021). Determinants of collective transport mode choice and its impacts on trip satisfaction in urban tourism. Journal of Transport Geography, 94, 103094.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103094.

Sato, M., Onbhuddha, R., Ma, B., & Ogata, S. (2024). Do young sustainable tourists build better relationships with destinations? European Journal of Sustainable Development, 13(2), 375-389. https://doi.org/10.14207/ejsd.2024.v13n2p375

Skagias, K., Vasiliadis, L., Belias, D., & Christos, P. (2021). From mass tourism and mass culture to sustainable tourism in the post-covid19 Era: The case of Mykonos. In V. Katsoni & C. van Zyl (Eds), Culture and Tourism in a Smart, Globalized, and Sustainable World: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of IACuDiT (pp. 347-358). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72469-6_23

Sukumaran, L., & Majhi, R. (2024). Not all who proclaim to be green are really green: Analysis of intention behavior gap through a systematic review of literature. Management Review Quarterly, 75, 1535-1574. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-024-00415-2

Toni, M., Renzi, M. F., & Mattia, G. (2018). Understanding the link between collaborative economy and sustainable behaviour: An empirical investigation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 172, 4467-4477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.11.110.

Uittenbroek, C. J., Mees, H. L., Hegger, D. L., & Driessen, P. P. (2022). Everybody should contribute, but not too much: Perceptions of local governments on citizen responsibilisation in climate change adaptation in the Netherlands. Environmental Policy and Governance, 32(3), 192-202. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1983

World Committee on Tourism Ethics (2020). Tips for a responsible traveller. UNWTO – World Tourism Organization. https://webunwto.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-07/Tips-for-Responsible-Traveller-WCTE-EN.pdf

World Tourism Organization (2005). Making tourism more sustainable: A guide for policy makers. World Tourism Organization.

World Tourism Organization (2024). International Tourism Highlights. UN Tourism. https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284425808

Ying, W., Bostani, A., Murtaza, S. H., & Ali, A. (2025). Harnessing Environmental Triggers to Shape Sports Tourists’ Sustainable Behavior: Evidence from Gilgit-Baltistan. Sustainability, 17(10), 4291. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17104291

Zamparini, L., & Vergori, A. S. (2021). Sustainable mobility at tourist destinations: The relevance of habits and the role of policies. Journal of Transport Geography, 93, 103088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103088

Zientara, P., Jażdżewska-Gutta, M., Bąk, M., & Zamojska, A. (2024). What drives tourists’ sustainable mobility at city destinations? Insights from ten European capital cities. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 33, 100931. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2024.100931