An Exploratory Study of Corporate Social Responsibility of Travel Agency Websites and Consumers' Low Carbon Travel Intention

• Published in: 2013 Seventh International Conference on Complex, Intelligent, and Software Intensive Systems pp. 661 - 666
• Main Authors: Ma Chunjou, Pang, Sharon F. H.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-07-2013
• Subjects: Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Educational institutions; Industries; Internet; low-carbon tourism; Mathematical model; Meteorology; travel agency websites
• DOI: 10.1109/CISIS.2013.119

Environment depletion and climate change lead to the concept of carbon reduction which should be a critical issue that is concerned by the world. Environment and climate could influence the income in tourism industry. In addition, the impact on environment resulted from traveling could also affect the future revenue in tourism industry. Environmental pollution could be slowed down by improving travel methods with green energy. Meanwhile, improvements require actions from both consumers and industry practitioners. This study aims to identify consumers' low carbon travel intention and their demand by adopting the environmental behavior model (Hines et al, 1986-87) [1] and to examine travel agencies' efforts on setting up the low-carbon travel products or promoting low-carbon traveling on their websites. This study provided a model for the relationship between the intention to act and the responsible environmental behavior in low-carbon traveling by investigating factors, including knowledge of low-carbon traveling, action skill, locus of control, attitudes, personal responsibility, intention to act, responsible environmental behavior, travel constraints and climate change. This model utilized the structural equation model (SEM). The findings revealed that action skill, attitudes, personal responsibility are the main factors which affect the intention to act low-carbon traveling. The promotion of low-carbon traveling on travel agencies' websites is obviously not enough. Corporate social responsibility on travel agencies' websites has a potential effect with consumers' low-carbon travel intention which could be a reference for tourism agencies in the future.