Exploring Intention & Reactance in Social Norm Interventions for Rail Business Travel
Journal
Zeitschrift für Tourismuswissenschaft
Type
case review (law)
Date Issued
2024-10-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Shifting continental business travel from carbon-intensive modes to rail is crucial for emissions reduction. Behavioral interventions are a way to achieve this, but a gap exists in understanding their efficacy for sustainable business travel behavior. Based on online experiments with frequent business travelers, we scrutinize the impact of descriptive social norm interventions on mode choice intention, considering potentially negative employee reactions. While revealing factors influencing reactance and intention, contrary to expectations derived from the theory of planned behavior, behavioral interventions literature, and psychological reactance theory, our social norm treatments did not significantly impact mode choice intention and resulted in low reactance levels. Despite these unexpected results indicating that our interventions did not yield the desired changes, our study underscores the challenges of influencing sustainable business travel behavior and emphasizes the need for tailored interventions and incentives in practice, suggesting avenues for further research.
Language
English
Keywords
Business travel decarbonization
Behavioral intervention
Psychological reactance
Modal switch
Theory of planned behavior
Travel time
Subject(s)
Division(s)