Consumer attitudes towards flying amidst growing climate concern

Abstract

Despite increasing attention on air travel’s significant and disproportionate contribution to climate change, meaningful reduction in consumer demand is nowhere in sight. Taking a consumer behaviour approach, this study adopts Katz’s attitude functions theory as a framework to better understand factors that shape attitudes towards discretionary air travel amidst growing climate concern. Interviews with Australian travellers indicate that the functions of air travel attitudes are utilitarian, value-expressive, and social-adjustive. These functions serve independent yet interrelated purposes. The ego-defense function was generally dormant until triggered when climate change was discussed directly, but then served as a mechanism for protecting the value-expressive and social adjustive functions. The timeliness and importance of the paper’s insights have been amplified by the need to rebuild post-COVID aviation for a climate safe future.