ABSTRACT
Mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel is one of the most challenging aspects of society’s response to climate change (Monbiot, 2007). Whereas research from the transport and tourism sectors agrees that air travel emissions are a key environmental challenge (Barr et al., 2010; Becken, 2007; Scott, 2011; Scott et al. , 2012), how to best address the climate impacts of discretionary air travel remains an elusive problem (Cohen et al. , 2011). Scope for further efficiency gains in aircraft emissions is declining (Scott et al., 2010), and there is not yet a global climate policy for international commercial aviation (Duval, 2013). Signatories of airlines in the United Kingdom, for instance, instead of choosing to transform supply or raise consumer awareness of air travel’s climate impacts, presently pin their hopes for a sustainable aviation future on technology, alternative fuels and operational innovations (Sustainable Aviation, 2011). In the context of industry resistance to wholesale supply changes and in the absence to date of a global market-based mechanism for aviation, such as carbon trading, the concept of encouraging voluntary public behaviour change has been presented as a mechanism for moving discretionary air travel consumption towards a more sustainable pathway (Barr et al., 2011a; Miller et al., 2010).
