ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explores the crucial role of people in achieving sustainable development in more detail. It highlights the impact of contexts shaped by the hospitality industry on people’s decisions and behaviours and reveals some of the underlying mechanisms, as well as the influence of conflicting motives, values and evolutionary processes. For instance, it shows that people often base their decisions and behaviours on habits and routines, and short-term self-interest, rather than consciously weighing overall utility of various behavioural alternatives. It also shows the relevance of concepts such as social dilemmas and the tragedy of the commons, and how these cannot be resolved based on the principles of the free market. It then moves on to reviewing how these mechanisms both explain the unsustainable course our societies are on and how they could be used, by carefully combining various approaches to influencing people’s decisions and behaviours, to adjust this course, also, and maybe even especially, in the hospitality industry.
