University of Ljubljana Global Alumni and Associates Network (SMUL): Enticing consumers to behave in environmentally sustainable ways

On Wednesday, 25 October 2023, a lecture titled ‘Enticing consumers to behave in environmentally sustainable ways’ took place within the framework of the University of Ljubljana global alumni and associates network or SMUL, for short. Prof. Dr. Sara Dolnicar, a professor of tourism at the University of Queensland in Australia and a member of The Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE), led the presentation. Prof. Dr. Ljubica Knežević Cvelbar, full professor at the Department of Economics at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, moderated the hybrid event.

Professor Dolnicar is actively researching and experimentally testing strategies to promote environmentally friendly behaviour among tourists at the University of Queensland. During her presentation, she highlighted and presented her field experiments, many of which conducted in Slovenian hotels. In these studies, her team examined the practical efficiency of theoretically designed interventions to change the behaviour of tourists.  

The goal of the interventions is to encourage tourists to more environmentally conscious behaviour and keep a high level of satisfaction of guests. The primary objective of implementing such measures is to reduce carbon emissions in the tourism industry. The tourism sector is among the top five most polluting sectors in the world despite accounting for only 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions. 

Dr Dolnicar emphasized in the presentation that we need urgent strategies that would efficiently encourage the consumers into a more environmentally sustainable behaviour. According to her research, the optimal solution would be an automatic system for monitoring environmental performance that would enable the implementation of field tests of interventions and monitoring of improvements over time. 

For those who missed the presentation, the video is available on YouTube. The University of Ljubljana global Alumni and associates network also invites you to other events that feature expert guests and professors from Slovenia and abroad, providing valuable insights and knowledge on various subjects. You can find out more on their website. 

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