Sustainable Leisure Lifestyles: Destination Gotland (Sweden)

Abstract: Tourism is one of the world’s biggest industries; it accounts for 11% of the global GDP, and is responsible for between 5 to 14% of the world’s global warming caused by human activities. Due to the large economic, social and environmental impacts that this activity has, attempts have been made to make it more sustainable. Nevertheless, the focus has traditionally been on the supply side. Tourism’s future trends and the anticipated increase in global environmental concerns present an opportunity to promote better environmental behavior among tourists. This thesis’ aim is to gain a deeper understanding of the demand side, by identifying and analyzing the factors (barriers, facilitators, awareness of impacts, available options, among others) that determine the choice of an environmentally preferable option by tourists. This study focuses on several tourism sub-sectors: transportation, accommodation, activities, and restaurants. Due to data availability, and for the purpose of simplicity, the impacts and the environmental preferable options are seen mainly from an emissions perspective. Field data was collected using questionnaires to 329 tourists on the Swedish island of Gotland. Data was processed using the statistical program SPSS 15. Frequencies, Spearman’s correlation coefficient, chi-square, and logistic regression statistical tools were used in order to identify the factors that significantly influence or predict tourist’s choices. Finally, this study proposes some policy measures in order to encourage tourists’ selection of options with less impact on the environment.