Increasing adoption of voluntary carbon offsets among tourists
基于德国长途游客样本，研究自愿碳抵消采用率低的原因，发现采用者多为年轻、冒险、素食或低碳饮食者，并指出未来市场发展需关注对碳抵消持积极态度但尚未实践的游客群体。
Air travellers have had the option to purchase voluntary carbon offsets (VCOs) available to them for almost a decade, yet adoption rates remain low. Drawing upon diffusion of innovations theory, and based on a sample of 449 German long-haul tourists, we analyse knowledge of VCOs, and using logit regressions, the probability of their purchasing VCOs. We investigate the profile of people who have actually purchased VCOs, unlike many earlier researchers who used stated preferences data to estimate willingness to pay. Our findings reveal that the drivers of adoption are primarily linked to lifestyle factors, including being young, adventurous, and having a vegetarian/low climate impact diet. A proportion of tourists are aware of VCOs but have not practiced offsetting to date, although they are positive towards the idea, are used to make donations, and are committed to environmental issues. Persuading travellers belonging to this group to actively engage in using VCOs is an important task for future VCO market development. It will be necessary to compare best-practice/less best practice airline policies, explore how to make VCO schemes more visible, and more closely examine the adopters market segment to improve communication strategies and encourage increased uptake of VCOs.