Slow Tourism Travel for a Lower Carbon Future
Funded by RGS-IBG EPSRC Research Grant
Project Lead: Dr Janet Dickinson
Introduction
What role does climate change play in holiday travel decisions? How can we encourage more sustainable holiday travel? Is slow travel a realistic alternative and what might encourage people to choose slow travel?
These are just some of the questions that provided the rationale for undertaking research into slow travel. Slow travel or slow tourism has been one response of the tourism industry to climate change concerns. It has featured in the media as an alternative to air travel and there is also growing slow travel movement which encourages people to travel to destinations more slowly overland, holiday in one place, stay longer and travel less. In recognition of the need to investigate this topic, the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) has supported this study. The research sought to explore the opportunities presented by slow travel for a lower carbon future.
"Our mission is to rediscover the joy of slow travel, to experience the transition of landscape, people, culture and language, to move through the world and not just over and above it." Ed Gillespie, The Observer 18/3/07
The Research
The research aim was to explore how established international tourism travel practices, with high greenhouse gas emissions, might be adapted to alternative ways of conceptualising holidays using slow travel in the lower carbon future. The study employed a discourse perspective and sought the views of both mainstream and slow travellers.
Between June and October 2008, Janet Dickinson conducted two phases of in-depth interviews before and after a European holiday with 16 participants (including some pairs of participants). Following the first interview, materials on the participant’s destination and potential for alternative travel options was compiled and an estimate made of the relative carbon footprint of options. The second interview focused on the actual travel experience and adopted a more challenging approach in relation to climate change based on the potential for use of alternative modes of transport. The analysis was interested in how discourses of holiday travel are used and how this enables or constrains what people do.
Further Information
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