Sustainable tourism: A quantitative study on awareness, attitudes and behaviors of young adults

Abstract: Sustainable tourism has been an emerging topic as environmental and social challenges have been rising these past few years while the tourism sector remains a fast-growing industry. Sustainable tourism can be defined as a “tourismthat takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities”(UNWTO, 2013, p.10).As part of our master’s thesis, we investigatedhow factors such as awareness andattitudes could influence the sustainable tourism behaviors of tourists. We focused our research on young adults, aged from 18 to 35 years old, as they can be considered as tomorrow’s travelers. Through this study, we investigatedwhether sustainable tourism awareness is really present among young adults and what is its impact on their behaviors. We were also interested in the relationships between attitudes and behaviors as this topic has often been studied in previous research. While someresearchers noticed correlations, others highlighted some gaps, emphasizing that behaviors do not always follow people's attitudes and concerns. Thus, the purpose of this master’s thesis wasto examinethe effects of sustainable awarenessand sustainableattitudesof young adults on their behaviors in the context of sustainable tourism.To address this topic, we formulated thefollowing research question:“What are the effects of sustainable awareness and sustainable attitudes on behaviors of young adultsin the context of sustainable tourism?”To answer this question, we developed a conceptual model and hypotheses to testthe effects between variables. We conducted an online surveyand we collected data from a sample of 208 respondents. To test the conceptual model, we performed multiple statistic tests including a Cronbach’s alpha test, a Pearson Correlation, and two regression analyses. The first regression measured the effects of awareness and attitudes on environmental tourism behaviors while thesecond one tested the same independent variables’ effects but this time, on social tourism behaviors. The findings highlighted significant positive effects of sustainable tourism awareness and attitudes on environmental behaviors. However, only social tourism attitudes appeared to have a significant positive effect on social tourism behaviors. Moreover, the findings also showed a slight gap between young adults’ attitudes and behaviors, especially regarding environmental tourism behaviors. Finally, despitethe fact that former studies have been mostly focusing on environmental tourism issues, our findings also identified an interest in social tourism issues from young adults.This work also aimed to address the lack of research investigating sustainable tourism through both social and environmental lenses. Moreover, it contributedto the existing knowledge by investigating the relationships between awareness, attitudes, and behaviors in the context of sustainable tourism, and on the specific population of young adults. Finally, thisthesis also providedrecommendations and research avenues for further works on the topic.