WHAT KEEPS US FROM TRAVELLING SUSTAINABLE? THE INFLUENCE OF INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES ON TOURISM BEHAVIOR
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2019-11-11
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en
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The way we do and comprehend tourism today is still far away from being sustainable. Although academic literature has so far extensively studied the tension field between tourism’s positive and negative implications, little research has been undertaken to understand the role of institutions and individual tourists in this social construct. Thus, the thesis’ principal objective is to detect how institutional structures influence tourists’ individual decision-making processes in regards to their endeavor to travel sustainable – building upon the concepts of path dependence and consumer behavior.
The findings revealed three different lock-ins – which derived from the historical developments following the German economic miracle and the occurrence of sustainability – that influence tourists’ individual decision-making processes in Germany. The communicational lock-in has been shown to affect tourists’ need for a, inter alia, convenient and simple information searching process negatively. Infrastructure and prices fueled by intense global competition, although being recognized by tourists as barriers, do not prevent this particular target group from travelling sustainable. Rather, they are mirrored in their overall dissatisfaction with the German railway system. Adding to the existing academic research, this work found that more people might travel more sustainable as soon as the former improves accordingly.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen