Mitigating the Climate Change Impacts of Aviation through Behavioural Change

Aviation plays a crucial role for economic development and social welfare, but at the same time it also significantly contributes to climate change. Therefore, if the industry wants to follow the same growth path as it has in the past, it will need to mitigate its environmental impacts more seriously or it may otherwise face regulatory restrictions. The current literature has discussed five mitigation strategies. These are technological changes, market-based changes, operational changes, regulatory changes and behavioural changes. While several authors have regarded behavioural changes as the measure with the greatest mitigation potential, it is also the measure that has received far less attention in the literature. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to investigate the potential of behavioural change as an instrument to mitigate the environmental impacts of aviation. The study is conducted in the form of a literature review. We first discuss issues related to the consumer’s environmentally responsible self-concept that often conflicts with the environmental impacts of flying, the so-called flying dilemma. We then provide an overview of aviation’s environmental impacts and present the five mitigation strategies in greater detail. After that we have a closer look at the concept of behavioural change. We then discuss separately measures of behavioural change from the perspective of the aviation industry and the air passengers. While the literature on the aviation industry presents many opportunities in which airlines can engage in behavioural change, the literature on air passengers is rather limited and focuses mainly on carbon offset. We instead have chosen another stream of literature that focuses on the novel idea of air passengers engaging in behavioural change by actively selecting airlines which are more environmentally friendly. We conclude this literature review with a discussion of how to bring green offer and demand together by drawing the conclusion that, in order to be able to mitigate the climate change impacts of aviation through behavioural change, an instrument to connect both ends would be needed.