Leisure Travel, Well-being, and Climate Change
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 2590
Special Issue Editors
2. Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
Interests: mobility; long-distance travel; urban planning; well-being; climate change mitigation
Interests: long-distance travel; urban planning; pro-environmental attitudes; pro-environmental behaviors
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We invite you to participate in a Special Issue on leisure travel, well-being, and climate change.
Mitigating climate change to keep warming below 1.5 or 2 degrees requires behavioral changes (i.e., demand-side solutions, Creutzig et al. 2018), along with changes in technologies and infrastructures. This is particularly true for long-distance travel and tourism, which is responsible for ca. 8% of the global carbon footprint (Lenzen et al. 2018) and a larger share of carbon footprints of wealthy urbanites (Czepkiewicz et al. 2019). A large share of emissions from leisure travel result from aviation, where gains in efficiency have been incremental and smaller than growth in demand (Peeters et al. 2016). There is thus an apparent need for changes in leisure travel and tourism practices, such as avoiding unnecessary trips, shortening travel distances, changing practices at the destination, or shifting to low-carbon travel modes.
Reductions in leisure travel might influence human well-being both positively and negatively. However, research on the topic is relatively scarce (Creutzig et al. 2021), and few studies tackle the issue directly (e.g., Nawijn & Peeters 2010, Ram et al. 2013, de Bloom et al. 2017). New practices of traveling and vacationing, such as slow travel or staycations, have emerged and might play an important role in transitioning towards sustainability (Dickinson et al. 2011, de Bloom et al. 2017), but their impact on human well-being remains understudied. Considerations of how well-being is defined and what constitutes a good or decent life are central to envisioning and enacting low-carbon futures (Lamb & Steinberger 2017, Fuchs et al. 2021). What role does leisure travel have in such futures? What place can leisure travel take in good lives that do not undermine the good lives of others?
Studies on well-being in the context of tourism are commonly focused on promoting new kinds of tourism practices and experiences and rarely connect to demand reductions (e.g., Vada et al. 2019). Some tourism scholars call for a more “positive” and “hopeful” outlook in tourism studies (Filep & Laing 2019). Can these calls be reconciled with climate change mitigation?
This Special Issue aims to stimulate research in this field and bring together researchers and insights from diverse fields. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions on the following and related topics:
- Alternative practices: What are the well-being effects of participation in alternative and low-carbon tourism and vacationing practices, such as slow travel, staycation, micro-trips, etc.?
- Well-being concepts: What is the role of different concepts of well-being, such as preference satisfaction, hedonia, life satisfaction, authentic happiness, eudaimonia, human needs, or buen vivir, in studying leisure travel?
- Well-being and behavioural change: what is the role of different concepts of well-being, “good life”, “life worth living”, or “decent life” in motivating or hindering behavioral change towards reduced travel?
- Covid-19 and leisure travel: What is the impact of travel restrictions on human health and well-being? How can the pandemic and post-Covid recovery influence both well-being and leisure travel demand?
- Connecting climate and well-being impacts: What are the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and well-being benefits of various leisure travel practices and travel frequencies?
- Leisure travel and sufficiency: Which leisure travel practices are part of decent living standards, and which would fit into sustainable consumption corridors? How much travel is enough? Is tourism a necessity, or is it a luxury?
- Leisure travel, inequality, and justice: What are the justice, equity, and well-being implications of the unequal participation in long-distance leisure travel? What are the justice, equity, and well-being implications of the potential reductions in leisure travel demand?
Dr. Michał Czepkiewicz
Ms. Áróra Árnadóttir
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- leisure travel
- tourism
- long-distance travel
- mobility
- well-being
- good life
- decent living standards
- climate change mitigation
- sufficiency
- consumption corridors
- sustainable tourism