Saving the environment one trip at a time: The motivation and changing tourism decisions of young people who choose not to fly

In 2018, the IPCC published an important report on climate change and showed that there is a need to take stringent measures in all economic sectors to try and avoid climate catastrophes (IPCC, 2018). In that same year, Greta Thunberg decided to take the train instead of a plane to a climate conference, which reinforced the flight shame movement (Orange, 2019). Especially young people were inspired by this movement and started experiencing growing concerns over climate change and their role in it (Lew, 2020). At the same time, young people are also a very influential group of travelers that want to immerse in local cultures and explore new destinations (UNWTO, 2016; Richards & Morrill, 2020). This urge to explore can thus clash with the growing concern over climate change. The purpose of this research is to get a deep understanding of the motivation of young people to stop flying and to see how their tourism decisions are influenced by this choice. Moreover, this research aims to understand how young people navigate their urge to travel after they have decided to stop flying. For this research, ten participants were interviewed. They were gathered through their involvement in activist groups and were thus already very concerned with sustainability. The results show that the participants were motivated by a strong feeling that this was the right thing to do for themselves and that by the chance that they could potentially influence someone else to do the same. This research introduces a shame of “wanderlack”, which can be identified as a social pressure experienced by young people because they do not feel the urge to travel the world. When looking at their changing tourism decisions, it is clear that the logistics of planning a trip have become more difficult, but the participants do think that it is worth to spend extra time and money. However, the results also shows some bottlenecks that endanger the resolution of the participants and can still lead them to make unsustainable choices. This coincides with the fact that many participants turned out to be less strict about the decision and this therefore shows that it is an incredibly difficult decision that is not as clear cut as it seems. Further research can thus be done to see how people negotiate these difficulties and to see how this influences their level of strictness regarding the decision.