New segmentation: Will you pay for being an Environmentally responsible tourist?

According to the paper of Beyond Ecotourism: The Environmentally Responsible Tourist in the General Travel Experience from Professor Sara Dolnicar, tourists who are not only motivated to take care of the natural surroundings of the destination sites, whether they are traveling in an eco-tourism or general tourism context, but also represent an economically attractive market segment.

The Challenges: Trade-off Between Tourism Revenues and Environmental Sustainability

Can we implement the pro-environmental measures on the trade-off between the cost of environmental protection and profit maximization? 

YES! By:
Demand-driven approaches should be investigated in more detail to assess whether they represent a valuable supplement to supply-sided measures.

Supply-side: Tourists can be reeducated, that individuals who do not take care of the environment can be somehow convinced to change their habitual behaviour while on vacation.

Demand-driven: Tourism destinations take more responsibility for the kinds of tourists they cater for. The approach is to environmentally sustainable tourism implies that tourism destinations target individuals who behave in an environmentally friendly manner and consequently do not have to be reeducated when arriving at the destination.

Willingness to pay for environment during vacation

Environmentally responsible tourists, operationalised by their willingness to pay for environmental initiatives taken on by the tour operator they are travelling with, demonstrate a profile that differs significantly from other tourists in areas such as travel information seeking, destination preferences, travel behaviour and willingness to pay $$$

Are they a New market segmentation?

Targeting this segment of environmentally responsible tourists is an attractive alternative to mass tourism marketing if there is genuine interest in environmentally sustainable tourism, and if the trade-off of profit versus long-term sustainability is taken into consideration.