In recent years the ecological impact of Tourism has been more and more considered, raising the issue of how to ensure higher levels of sustainability. Especially when it comes to flights, the issue of energy consumption and of exploring strategies to reduce the CO2 footprint of civil aviation has attracted a special attention, in particular while taking into account the so-called attitude-behavior gap, which describes major discrepancies between what people say about their commitment to sustainability and what they actually do when taking decisions. A possible strategy to address such issues is leveraging on “nudges” while persons are exploring available flights on an online travel agency’s platform (OTA), ensuring that they are adequately informed and offered good – more sustainable – alternatives. Based on the current literature and on the analyzed cases, this study presents a first map of twelve possible types of nudges, organized in four main categories: CO2 emissions, transportation mode, CO2 compensation, and sustainability efforts. Moreover, it shows their actual, quite limited, presence on ten major OTAs.
1 Introduction
The worldwide increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions goes along with the increase in global air traffic. Since the 1960s, it came to a seven-fold increase of aviation emissions [16]. The aviation industry is responsible for 2.5% of the world’s CO2 emissions. If we take the whole tourism industry into account, it makes up already 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions [11]. Transportation is one of the significant contributors. An increase of demand in transportation and tourism does not align with the goal to adjust the industry to a more sustainable business.
To achieve the goal of reaching a higher consciousness of the environmental impact of tourism activities, another important aspect needs to be considered. At the same time as the air traffic and with it the CO2 emissions are increasing, also the number of online bookings is raising. In 2022 already 68% of all sales in travel and tourism have been made online with a projection to reach 74% by 2027 [23].
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The digital world and the communication of the travel and tourism products play an important role in influencing people’s travel choices. To get to the point where travelers take conscious decisions towards the environment, all players of the industry are needed. The online travel market and online travel agencies (OTAs) are no exception to it. However, the possible role and actual efforts of OTAs in the sustainability domain are not yet sufficiently investigated.
The potential of nudging techniques through user interfaces is in the focus of this research. Nudging is a technique to not patronize the users but guide them in a direction that helps them to make decisions that are good according to certain criteria (in this case, for the environment). For people to act more sustainably, we encounter often the issue of the so-called “attitude-behavior gap”: even though travelers want to contribute to a greener future, and declare their interest and commitment, their attitude is not represented in their actions [25]. By combining technology and sustainability in the context of tourism, a bridge can be built to spread more environmental consciousness and to overcome the attitude-behavior gap. Green nudges that are integrated in the flight booking process and in the interface design of OTAs can be used for it. Different nudging strategies and their current state of implementation by OTAs are introduced in this research.
2 Literature Review
2.1 eTourism
The advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has resulted in the accessibility of various products across several geographical regions, at any given time. It pushed the tourism industry to shift more and more to the online world. Tourists and businesses adopted the transformation of processes and value chains supported by ICTs. This development is called eTourism [12], which can be defined as: “the design, implementation and application of IT and ecommerce solutions in the travel and tourism industry as well as the analysis of the impact of the respective technical and economic processes and market structures on all the involved actors and especially on the traveler’s experience” [29]. Increased accessibility, visibility of information and availability of products are some of the main benefits of the integration of ICTs in the tourism sector [10].
Travel agencies too, saw that its integration is inevitable for a successful business, hence online travel agencies have emerged, which serve as a database of travel providers and simplify the travel research for travelers. Online travel agencies achieve a more effective promotion and communication of their offers through ICTs while on the other hand also the travelers are empowered because their efficiency and competencies are improved by the use of information and booking systems [1]. Online communication is a crucial element in the sale of tourism products via OTAs, as ICTs are a driver of value co-creation [14]. Users are enabled to take part in the development of their experience. Against this background, OTAs have to adapt to the needs of users and try to reach their attention through digital communication and marketing.
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In recent years, research and development in the field of eTourism has more and more integrated the issue of sustainability, underlying how digital tools and (big) data as well as physical processes, managerial practices and policies should be orchestrated in order to support a more sustainable tourism sector and more cautious and responsible tourism practices [7].
2.2 Sustainable Tourism
The topic of sustainability is an omnipresent topic both in praxis and in research. In the tourism research, the first scientific journal related to the topic was published in 1993 under the title “Journal of Sustainable Tourism” and the scientific interest in it has been growing ever since, exploring its many dimensions, encompassing economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability [2], the one which is addressed in this paper. The online world of the sector is now also more in the focus. However, it is still a challenge to align the commercial interest of the industry with the principles of sustainability, not only from a business perspective but also from a traveler’s view. The attitude behavior gap explains a typical phenomenon in the field, this gap can be best explained with the example of air travel. Most people are aware of the negative impact flying has on the environment, but such awareness that something needs to be changed towards a more sustainable future is not represented in the behavior of many travelers.
Research on how to make the aviation industry more sustainable is ongoing. Different scholars present approaches on how to reach a change. Guimarans et al. [8] for example places a lot of hope in a more effective air traffic management to avoid additional noise and greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, Qiu et al. [15] and Peeters et al. [13] do not see the problems of aviation independent of the whole business. Their main hope lies in the technological progress to avoid a restriction of flights in the future. The authors see that a step into the direction of more sustainability does not go without political innovation, financial instruments like taxes on international travel, and a change in tourism products.
Tiago et al. [24], Font et al. [5] and Tölkes [25] attribute the low number of sustainable tourism bookings not only to the lack of adequate products, but mainly to the lack of communication about it. They find that especially the research on the online communication of sustainable tourism products lacks behind.
2.3 Online Communication and Nudging
Online communication serves as a powerful tool for conveying information to customers. The digital communication sources are perceived as reliable and useful when it is used as a medium for marketing [17]. Through it, the customers are influenced in their buying decision. Hernández-Méndez and Muñoz-Leiva [9] find that optimizing the advertising campaigns of tourism businesses goes best when knowing the effectiveness of different online advertising strategies: it is getting more and more important to measure the effectiveness of web design and integrated advertising strategies.
Digital nudging harnesses this power to influence. Guiding people’s behavior in digital choice environments with user interface design elements is the definition Schneider et al. [19] provide for digital nudging. The strategy of nudging is part of the behavioral economics, it addresses people’s decision-making process [3]. However, they do not restrict the freedom of choice of the user. Different options get presented in a specific way, which influences the user to make a decision based on the given alternatives they have. The user is not able to make neutral decisions anymore because presenting options is never neutral [19]. Behavioral economics tries to look at the economic decisions of individuals by analyzing psychological, cultural, emotional, cognitive and social factors, and has offered a context within which nudging has been explored [21].
Websites and mobile apps serve as user interfaces, which are typical digital environments where nudges can be used. To promote more sustainable behavior, green nudges are designed [3]. Green nudging appears to offer a concrete possibility to overcome the attitude behavior gap in the sustainability topic: the research on green nudging in tourism is thus emerging. One of the main nudges that scholars investigate is providing information about CO2 emissions when it comes to booking flights. Enste & Potthoff [4] find that the willingness to pay for flights with fewer emissions is higher if a label shows the flights with the least CO2 emissions and a breakdown into more sustainable vs. less-sustainable flights is provided. It helps customers to make choices towards a greener flight. The authors conclude that websites that sell flights should include a nudge that promotes lower-emission flights in a non-freedom restricting way. Sanguinetti & Amenta [18] conducted a similar study where they prominently display the emissions of the flights next to cost, layovers, and airports. They found that participants in their study had an impressive rate of willingness to pay for lower-emission flights.
Wehrli et al. [27] tested another nudge where the CO2 compensation of a flight is included in the price of the travel product, while an opt-out instead of an opt-in option is provided. Also, Weinmann et al. [28] concluded that changing the default to an opt-out option serves as a nudging technique with big potential.
While emerging, the current research in the field of green nudging in the tourism and especially aviation industry is however still very limited, in particular, the online communication of OTAs and different possible nudges are rarely tackled in research [20]. In this paper, we address this issue, in particular when it comes to the online booking of flights.
3 Methodology
OTAs play a crucial role in the communication of tourism products. They sell their products through web interfaces, by which they make their sales revenues [26]. OTAs are often used as search platforms by users to compare different flights. The platforms and their interfaces bear a huge potential to include nudges to make people opt for more sustainable tourism products. To find out about the current state of incorporation of nudges on the OTAs websites during a flight booking process, a content analysis has been conducted: information was collected on the presence of green nudging techniques.
Ten different OTAs have been chosen to conduct flight booking simulations. The selection of the OTAs is based on the statistics “most popular flight search engines online bookings by brand in Switzerland 2022” [22]. Billig-reise.ch is excluded from the analysis because the website did not show any results during the period of research from April to June 2023. The OTAs that were investigated were Booking, Ebookers, CheapTickets, Expedia, Fluege.de, Lastminute.de, Tripadvisor, Google Flights, Agoda, Skyscanner.
The investigation on the websites of those ten OTAs has been done on the desktop website and not via the mobile website or application.
On the 4th and 5th of June 2023, the content analysis was conducted. The simulation of two flights with the connection Zurich – Amsterdam on the 1st of August 2023 to the 8th of August 2023 and a long-distance connection Zurich – Bangkok in the same time period were performed. The flight booking process was executed as a guest user without logging into the OTAs user accounts. The English version of the website has been used, and the simulation was done with a MacBook Pro and the Incognito Mode of the Google Chrome Browser. Notes have been taken on the contents and functionalities that aim to encourage users to be more sustainable.
A list of categories of nudges has been developed in order to evaluate if they are present on the interface during the flight booking process through the OTAs website. The category-formation has been done descriptively by considering the current literature on the topic and cases from other OTAs and airline companies [20] as well as analyzing green nudges that are used in the web-design of OTAs that focus on sustainable travel like Fly Green (https://fly.green) or FlyGRN (https://flygrn.com). Additionally, by conducting flight booking simulations through the websites, each time an element was found, which was not yet present in the list, the list has been updated, and previously analyzed OTAs have been re-checked for consistency and completeness. By such recursive process, a list of twelve types of green nudges has been compiled.
By running the scenarios, notes were taken on the presence of the listed nudges. For a consistent analysis, the first flight option that was presented to the user on the search results page was chosen for continuing the process. The simulation stopped at the point of payment, and no information could be collected about the web design and the possible appearance of nudges during the payment process and afterward.
The results aim to answer the following research questions:
Which nudges might be used by OTAs in their online communication in order to invite users to make more sustainable flight choices?
Are such nudges extensively adopted in the online communication of OTAs and, if not, which ones are used and which ones are not?
4 Results
Hereafter, the results are presented as follows: first the list of identified types of nudges, then how they are actually implemented in the ten studied OTAs’ platforms.
4.1 Towards a Taxonomy of Nudges
In Table 1, twelve types of nudges are listed, which could be integrated into the online communication of OTAs during the flight booking process. They have been organized according to four main categories, depending on their focus on (I) CO2 emissions; (II) Transportation mode; (III) CO2 compensation; and (IV) Sustainability efforts. While overall such twelve nudges can be considered – at the state of the art – collectively exhaustive, they are not mutually exclusive: more than one category can appear, and more than one nudge can be used belonging to the same category, even if this last case is very uncommon.
Table 1.
Identified types of nudges, and their categories.
Type/Category
Description
CO2 emissions
1. Carbon emissions
Display the carbon emissions of the flights shown in the search result page
2. Ratio of emissions
Indicate the percentage of emissions of a specific flight compared to the average emissions of alternative flights on the same route shown in the search results
3. Emission comparison to everyday examples
Indicate the ratio of the emissions of a specific flight compared to the emissions of a more commonplace CO2-emitting example like the carbon footprint of a steak or the annual CO2 emissions of a person in Europe. This serves for a better understanding of the impact of the emissions of a specific flight
4. Sustainability filter
Present a filter function to indicate flights with lower CO2 emissions than the average on top of the search results
5.Direct flights at the top
Present direct flights to the destination at the top of the search results, even if the departure airport changes, to get a direct connection
Transportation mode
6. Alternative transportation mode
Show more sustainable transportation alternatives, like the train for a connection where possible, on top before displaying the flight results
7. Train connection to airport
Include the train connection to and from the airport in the ticket price and promote it
CO2 compensation
8. Link to CO2 compensation payment
Provide a link to a provider where the user can offset the carbon emissions of the flight
9. Direct payment
Offer the option to pay CO2 compensation directly in the flight booking process or via the website
10. Add offsetting to the price
Add the CO2 compensation to the ticket price with the option to deselect the function (opt-out)
11. Different ticket options
Offer different ticket options in addition to economy, business, or first class, like economy green, where the CO2 compensation or SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) is already included
Sustainability efforts
12. Sustainability efforts of airline
Present the sustainability efforts of the airlines of the displayed flights in the search results
While it is not possible here to provide a detailed description of how each of those twelve nudges can be represented in the user-interface of OTAs, in Fig. 1 we provide just one example, taken from an OTA with a peculiar focus on sustainability. It represents a nudge under the category “Transportation mode”: Alternative transportation mode. In this case, the platform suggests to travel by train, putting alternatives by train immediately above the flight ones (which are not visible in the screenshot). The example is given for the connection Zurich-Paris but can be applied to any connection where an alternative transportation mode is available.
Fig. 1.
Screenshot of FlyGRN with MacBook Pro via Google Chrome (the logos of the railway company and of social media channels have been covered in grey).
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4.2 Presence Within OTAs Platforms
The results reveal the status quo of the presence of green nudges on the interfaces of OTAs’ websites during the flight booking process. By evaluating the results, it can be concluded whether, which and how many of the green nudges are used by the ten analyzed OTAs and, in general, how many of the OTAs engage in green nudging at all.
From all the analyzed twelve nudges, five have been found in this study, and also five are the analyzed OTAs that engage in the implementation of any form of green nudging. Figure 2 provides an overview on the results.
Fig. 2.
Presence of types of nudges within OTAs’ platforms.
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Hereafter a presentation of the results according to individual categories.
CO2 Emissions
Google Flights is the only OTA that presents information about the amount of carbon emissions that a flight emits. It is displayed prominently next to the information about the timetable, duration, directness, and price of the flight in the search results page. The information is given for both short-distance and long-distance flights.
The nudge that is used most often by OTAs is “the ratio of emissions”. Booking.com, Google Flights, and Skyscanner include it in their web design during the flight booking process. The ratio is presented as the proportion of CO2 that is released by a specific flight compared to an average flight on that route. It is interesting that more OTAs indicate the ratio of emissions than the exact amount of carbon dioxide.
None of the analyzed OTAs is comparing the emissions of the flight to a more day-to-day example that emits CO2 to create a greater consciousness about the negative impact of the emissions in the minds of the user choosing the flight. This would help the user to have a better comparison of the exact amount of emissions that are used for a flight on a specific route.
Two out of the three OTAs that present the ratio of emissions also include the option to filter after sustainability, namely Google Flights and Skyscanner. Because they already indicate the ratio of emissions, they provide the option to filter for the flights with fewer emissions than average.
Even though it is common for OTAs to display direct flights at the top of the search results, none of the OTAs presents it there because it has the lowest CO2 emissions of all indicated flights, but because it has the “best value”. Therefore, none of the OTAs explicitly state that the direct flights are prioritized due to their lower emissions compared to alternative flight connections.
Transportation Mode
Presenting alternative, more sustainable transportation modes at the top of the search results for connections where such an alternative is possible, is not done by the analyzed OTAs. From the html code of the website, it appeared that Google Flights was ready to include such a nudge, however, it seems that a certain threshold has not been met for it to be displayed for the analyzed connections.
Including the ticket for a train connection to the airport and from the airport to the city center of the destination, is not promoted by the analyzed OTAs. To reduce traffic congestion around airports, the inclusion of the public transportation tickets around the airport in the overall ticket price could be an approach.
CO2 Compensation
To compensate for the environmental impact of the chosen flights, the user could get a link presented, where the CO2 offsetting can take place. However, none of the analyzed OTAs redirect their customers to websites that provide such a service.
Instead of providing a link, the OTA could include the CO2 compensation in its booking procedure, where the user can add the extra payment to his/her flight. This saves the extra effort that the user has to do in order to redirect to another website for the compensation. The results show that none of the OTAs are offering the direct payment option.
A third nudge in the category “CO2 compensation” could be to already include the carbon offsetting into the ticket price with an opt-out instead of an opt-in option. The results of [27] and [28] show that offering an opt-out instead of opt-in option is more effective. However, none of the analyzed OTAs provided such a feature during the flight booking process.
The nudge “different ticket options” is only indicated by Ebookers and Expedia, and only for the short-distance flight.
Sustainability Efforts
As in the above-mentioned case of “different ticket options”, also the nudge “sustainability efforts of the airline” is only adopted by Ebookers and Expedia. This has to do with the airline that is operating the flight. If the airline is providing the information to the OTA, the platform can display it. Because a different airline was chosen for the short-distance than for the long-distance flight, the nudges were not included for the long-distance flight even though it was the same OTA. If the other OTAs would include such a nudge if another airline than the ones indicated on top of the search results would have been chosen, cannot be concluded in this research. The different ticket options and sustainability efforts of the airline are no features of the OTAs, however if the information is available, the OTAs should include it in their web-design. However only two OTAs include such information.
5 Discussion and Conclusion
Our analysis has demonstrated that there is a major room for improvement when it comes to implement nudges toward more sustainable travelling practices within OTAs interfaces to select flights. In fact, according to the presented scenarios, only three out of four categories of nudges have been incorporated by just five OTAs out of the ten considered. The opportunity of action on the topic of sustainability in the tourism sector is evident, not only considering CO2 emissions, but also other polluting elements by airplanes, like nitrogen oxides (NOx).
This paper has provided a twofold contribution.
On the one side, at the academic level, it has provided a first taxonomy of green nudges that can be implemented by OTAs in order to raise awareness about sustainability issues and to promote more sustainable travelling practices. Moreover, it has contributed the current state of the art of ten major OTAs, those most used in Switzerland.
On the other side, from an industry perspective, the results can be used by OTAs – and at a large extent also by airline companies – in order to re-design their interface and to further embrace a sustainable travel “philosophy”; moreover, the studied nudges might contribute to bridge the attitude-behavior gap, which has been so frequently found when it comes to promoting sustainable and responsible travel practices.
While discussing the presented results, it is important to stress that the impact of air travelling is not evenly distributed among all travelers: according to a recent study, “The percentile of the most frequent fliers – at most 1% of the world population – likely accounts for more than half of the total emissions from passenger air travel. Individual users of private aircraft can contribute to emissions of up to 7,500 t CO2 per year” [6]; consequently, if possible, efforts should be mostly aimed at involving those specific publics. Moreover, further research from outside of the Tourism domain might in the future better specify the actual environmental impact of air travel or suggest further strategies to limit it.
This research has to be considered a preliminary one. Further follow-up studies might explore more OTAs and include also airline companies. Future research can furthermore take not only the point of view of the end user – like we did while executing the scenarios, searching for available flights to travel between two specific points in space – but also including the views of managers of OTAs.
A further perspective should focus on the actual effectiveness of such nudges. It might be implemented through digital analytics and A/B testing, answering such questions as are those nudges effective? for whom? under which conditions? Also a survey with end users might be done, assessing which nudges are perceived by them as the most convincing and effective ones.
Acknowledgements
This research is a development of a study started within the framework of the Master in International Tourism at USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland), as a Master thesis conducted by Jannina Maleika Stüben and supervised by Lorenzo Cantoni.
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