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Food consumption accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, with the hospitality industry, including restaurants, playing a significant role. While behavioural interventions show promise in promoting climate-friendly food choices, their implementation in hospitality operations poses significant challenges. This study integrates the operational perspectives of managers and staff with consumer behaviour insights to provide a more holistic understanding of intervention design in real-world hospitality settings. Through workshops with staff at an à la carte restaurant in a Swedish tourist destination, we co-designed a carbon label intervention and tested it in a field experiment. While the overall effect on consumer choice was limited, a substitution from high–to medium-emission dishes was observed. Moreover, our research offers a framework and practical insights for collaboratively designing behavioural interventions in hospitality. The study underscores the importance of staff engagement, guest satisfaction, and the need for ongoing adaptation in intervention design. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Recreational trail of high quality for activities like cross-country skiing or mountain biking (MTB) are often the main attraction that drives a visit to a destination. In countries where open access to the recreational landscape applies, user compliance to the funding model is a key for the long term economic sustainability of the trail product. Practically, trail providers struggle with obtaining knowledge about the actual quantitative use of their trails and ultimately to define the success of their funding model. From a research perspective, understanding of mechanism that makes a user to comply is a challenge. This study aims to identify the actual compliance rate to a cross-country ski pass funding model at a Ski resort in the county of Dalarna, Sweden. The research question “What is the actual compliance rate to a trail pass system of visitors at the resort?” is answered by using a three quantitative data sources; a) on-site surveys that captures visitors’ demographics and skiing behaviour as well as the stated behaviour for the trail pass purchase, i.e. compliance to the funding model (I did not buy/ I do not want to answer); b) counters are positioned along the trail, capturing the actual use of the trails; c) the daily/weekly/monthly trail pass sales at the ski resort. Comparison of the three data sources with provides information about inaccuracies and conspicuous features to make conclusions about the actual rate of compliance and non-compliance. The paper also includes a discussion on funding models for cross-country ski trails and especially the feature of visible trail pass badges/stickers, that the skier are prompted to wear, and its effects on purchase behaviour. Limitations, especially related to the installed counters and skiers that possibly slip through all three data collection techniques are discussed and acknowledged.

Place-based knowledge of transport patterns at various spatial scales is fundamental for sustainable mobility planning in rural tourism areas. Our purpose in this paper is to report on a study carried out between 5 March and 5 May 2024 with the focus on mapping transport activities and places with mobility deficits in the rural tourism border municipalities of Malung-Sälen, Älvdalen, Trysil and Engerdal in Sweden and Norway.  We used a Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) survey to gather information on travel patterns and identify places in the four municipalities that require transport improvements. The study included citizens, second homeowners, and tourists. We received 1,426 responses to the survey and 1,758 unique locations have been identified by respondents as being in need of transport improvements. Of these, preliminary results show that Mälung-Sälen has the greatest need for improvement, leading the way with 966 locations identified. Not surprisingly, the use of diesel or petrol cars dominates both every day and leisure mobility in all municipalities. The dominance of carbon-intensive car-based travel in the region exacerbates climate change and poses a significant challenge for planning and facilitating a modal shift to more sustainable transport systems. This study is unique because it provides empirical data from several stakeholder groups, making it possible to analyze the perception of the need for transport improvements among different groups. Another novel contribution is the cross-border context for the study which offers analysis of mobility both within a country and between two Nordic countries. The results aid in understanding current mobility requirements in the region, providing useful knowledge for future sustainable transport planning.

Providers of open access tourism products have to rely on visitors complying to their funding model. Visitor monitoring is often seen as cumbersome and challenging considering geographic remoteness and multiple entry and exit point. Within a Swedish context, funding models are also restricted due to the Public Right of Access to nature (allemansrätten). Swedish trail providers, offering activities such as cross-country skiing, are therefore dependent on the tourist’s willingness to pay (WtP) for trail passes and their compliance to the presented funding model. Understanding visitors’ perception and acceptance (or disapproval) to a funding model of an open access tourism product becomes crucial for trail providers to develop an attractive trail product. With an inductive approach including semi-structured interviews, this study aims to develop a better understanding of visitors’ perception of trail pass systems and possibly identify motivations why visitors comply/ not comply to a trail pass system for cross-country skiing in two Swedish tourist resorts. With so far mainly quantitative studies about cross-country skiers’ compliance to funding models, a qualitative approach provides more in-depth knowledge and fills a significant gap in the literature.Participants are recruited via a preceding survey with the incentive of a gift voucher to participate in a follow-up interview. Qualitative content analysis is used to analyse 15 interviews with focus on visitors’ perception of the funding models and reasons for compliance to those. Insights about drivers for non-compliance are seen as especially relevant for this study.Limitations in terms of possible social desirability bias and language barriers during the interviews are discussed and assessed.

Proposal and OriginalityFood consumption in tourism is a key contributor to the tourism industry’s carbon footprint. Yet, empirically tested interventions aimed at nudging tourists towards more sustainable food choices are lacking. 

By conducting a field experiment in a restaurant at a major Swedish winter destination, we study how food service providers in tourism can boost the sustainable food choices of consumers via carbon labels. Our findings contribute to knowledge on the drivers of sustainable tourist behaviour. This has practical implications for providers aiming to trigger sustainable behaviour.

Methodology We ran two workshops with restaurant staff to design an intervention (CO2e labels) aimed at triggering sustainable food choices of consumers. A field experiment tested the intervention over 6 weeks using an A-B-A experimental design. In the analysis, 9 menu items and 1449 data cases were used.

Results and ImplicationsTheoretical implications concern the advancement of knowledge on the behavioural factors that drive sustainable food choices of tourists and the challenges and opportunities tourism providers face in facilitating more sustainable food choices. Practical implications concern new knowledge on the design of effective interventions and how these can reduce providers’ carbon footprint with sustained or increased profitability. Methodologically, we contribute with new understandings of field experiments designed in collaboration with restaurant managers and staff.

Research Limitations The study was conducted in only one restaurant. Other factors that might influence consumers’ food choices (price, taste, personal disposition etc) were not measured. 

The funding of recreational trails in publicly accessible nature areas is a prevailing challenge for the development of tourism destinations. In some cases, mandatory fees are neither ideologically nor legally supported, meaning that local stakeholders are reliant on the voluntary contributions of trail users. In light of the motivational barriers and uncertainties that hinder recreationists from donating, we tested behaviourally informed interventions to enhance cooperation in such settings. Specifically, we examined the effect of normative social cues on the share and amount of donations for mountain biking trails by conducting a field experiment in a rural destination in Sweden. Consistent with our predictions and previous studies, we found an increase in both the donation amount and share of donators after the intervention. Additionally, our research shows that the change in behaviour seems to be related to the belief about the donation behaviour of others, which can easily be targeted in policies. These findings imply that voluntary contribution schemes enhanced with normative messages can provide effective funding strategies for recreational nature-based trails. The importance of developing these strategies with regard to the local context is highlighted. Management implications: • Mountain bikers are, to a large extent, willing to contribute financially to the upkeep of trails through donations. Proving information about previous contributions and framing techniques to highlight this norm can further increase the share of contributions. • Contributions of approximately SEK100–120 (€9–11) per visit seem to be the norm for mountain bikers in Rörbäcksnäs. • Stakeholders involved in the management of recreational trails might benefit from making more effort to raise awareness about the possibilities to donate, for example through more channels and displays, and by testing different placements and designs. © 2023 The Authors

Norm-nudges are effective in encouraging sustainable consumer behaviour in various settings, by raising the salience of the target behaviour via social norms. Tourism presents a highly hedonic context, in which behaviour is primarily framed by self-oriented goals as opposed to normative ones related to the good of the environment and society. While the existing literature provides insights on the appropriate content of norm-nudges to raise the salience of normative goals, less is known about an appropriate frequency of nudges. It is important to address this gap in tourism because tourists need to be aware of desired sustainable behaviours, while overly obtrusive nudges may backfire. A field experiment was conducted to test the extent to which an increased frequency of norm-nudges has a backfiring effect on sustainable tourist behaviour, using donations for mountain-biking trails as the target behaviour. Results show that increasing the frequency of norm-nudges does not diminish their positive uptake, which suggests that they can be used more to encourage sustainable behaviour and enhance tourists’ experiences. Using actual and self-reported behavioural data, this study provides new empirical evidence on the effectiveness of increased frequency of norm-nudges in a real tourism setting, contributing to knowledge on norm-nudges and backfiring effects. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study is the first research output coming out from a newly launched project on Recreational mobility and trails in mountain destinations: Understanding Behavioural insights and New technology in relation to funding systems for high quality trails in a Swedish context, funded by the Swedish KK-foundation. The overall purpose is to analyse prerequisites for funding and management of trails as part of developing nature-based tourist destinations. This specific study looks at the challenge of understanding the consumer behaviour of tourists when it comes to the decision to contribute to trail funding by buying a trail pass and to understand if and how context of resort ownership, other visitors’ behaviour and the social norm, matters for the decision. With a quantitative approach and 346 filled in surveys we are sharing lessons learnt hwo to measure actual behaviour towards criticial questions.

This report provides a brief explanation of the MIRANDA tool and its links to the D.U.GIS platform. The report also presents system components and data sources used within the MIRANDA tool.

The starting point for the development of the MIRANDA tool has been the call for better understanding of the scale and scope of tourism at the local and regional levels. The purpose of the MIRANDA project was to develop a micro-based decision support to be used by public planners for more efficient and sustainable decisions regarding infrastructure investments in connection with destination development.

This report gives a brief introduction to the project before starting out with an overview of the MIRANDA-tool’s software architecture. This is followed by a description of the Coding languages, a section giving information on the Class libraries, as well as the type of data used. Following this are two sections describing APIs and the system model, before a final section concludes by giving an outlook for future development options for the MIRANDA tool.

Mobility planning in rural areas with a high number of tourists is important for creating sustainable destinations. By identifying mobility gaps in the transportation system, measures to improve the situation can be implemented. In order to identify such mobility gaps, decision-makers need a spatial decision support system (SDSS). The aim of this paper is to identify vital aspects of creating such an SDSS and to build a prototype. Two important aspects were identified, data and system design. The result of the analysis of available data shows a lack of data portals with disaggregated socio-economic and intradestination travel data. Further, it shows that data on points of interest (POI) and public transit data are primarily found in company databases. The system design analysis showed that most SDSS today are relying on public data and are not designed to integrate disparate data sources. They are primarily developed to be used by experts. Based on these findings an SDSS that automatically integrates both public and private data was developed. It comprises a self-hosted web mapping system and several geospatial tools. Our main conclusion is that both data and system design are important aspects to consider when building an SDSS for mobility planning. By using the architecture proposed in this article, new data can easily be incorporated in an SDSS. Furthermore, the system design also facilitates the involvement of stakeholders in the planning process. © 2022. by the authors. All Rights Reserved.