Revealing how some of our students think about sustainable travel behaviour

They investigated their attitudes and consumption profile towards sustainability in their travel habits. Overall, the overwhelming majority of students who completed the questionnaire are trying to behave in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way when travelling. Feedback from social norms may be one of the drivers for this, but many of them are already striving to be as sustainable as possible in their everyday lives too. However, nearly half of respondents say that they do not necessarily make an extra effort to be sustainable when they travel. It is important to note, that in reality, the responses suggest that it is still possible that students are adopting the most environmentally conscious behaviour in their choices. 

Validated scales in line with international scientific standards were used in the research. The focus of the questionnaire was to explore the issue of sustainability, based on the study by Liu et al. 2020 in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, a Scopus listed D1 journal, which also investigated travellers’ sustainability behaviour.  

The Department’s questionnaire was validly completed by a total of 217 students in Hungarian and 238 students in English. The total sample, after deleting the invalid completions, was 455. The survey was filtered to those who had participated in a tourism related travel in the last almost two years, since 1 January 2023.  

Of the sustainability dimensions, students rated the two statements in the perceived behavioural control factor as the most important. Of the two indicators, the statement ” I am confident that I can, if I want to, behave responsibly to protect the environment of the area I visit.” stood out in particular, as 94.8% of respondents agreed with this statement more than not. The other statement in this dimension (“I have the opportunity to act responsibly to protect the environment during my travels.”) was also agreed by 90.3% of respondents.  

Nearly 90 percent of the respondents are willing to adopt green practices and make an effort to behave in an environmentally responsible way in their everyday life during their travel period. These statements reinforce the dimensions of green behavioural intention and everyday green behaviour. These are antecedent variables, i.e. their high values indicate that a given situation can be judged by the respondents on the basis of their prior environmentally conscious attitude, and how to choose the sustainable option from it.  

There is average agreement for the two statements in the subjective norm (“My close social environment believes that I should behave responsibly when travelling in order to protect the environment.” and ” My close social environment wants me to behave responsibly when travelling in order to protect the environment.”), which still resulted in an agreement of around 75%. The students’ environment is also expected, or at least students feel so, to behave responsibly towards their environment when travelling. This also points to the high societal expectations in this issue.  

The two statements with which university students disagree the least, to a very similar extent. Interestingly, these statements fall into the dimensions of green behaviour (“I am willing to invest more energy in travelling in order to behave in an environmentally friendly way [e.g. choosing eco-friendly accommodation]”) and everyday green behaviour (“I often discuss environmental problems with my close social circle.”). However, they differ from the others in that these statements measure the “extra”, surplus attitude towards sustainability issues within the environmentally conscious behaviour. Even with these statements, a near majority (49.8 and 49.7 percent) still agree, and slightly more than a fifth of respondents are neutral on the issue. 

Colleagues in the Department of Tourism are very grateful for the many completions and are trying to use most of the questions to build a multivariate regression model and cluster students along different behaviours and attitudes, aggregated of course. The research is part of a longer project, presented in Corvinus News by Dr. habil Melinda Jászberényi  in the spring, which argues that it is worth starting to learn about sustainable travel and behaviours at an early age. More detailed results are planned to be published soon in Hungarian and English as scientific papers. 

The related prize draw has also been completed. It took place via wheelofnames.com. The prize is one night’s accommodation for two people with breakfast at the Kistücsök Food & Room in Balatonszemes. The winning student will be contacted directly.