Whose real behavior counts? Rethinking behavioral realism in sustainable tourism research – a commentary on Viglia et al. (2024)
本文评论Viglia等人关于测量真实行为的呼吁，提出三个扩展：行为数据受技术权力中介、意图不可替代、行为主体应包含从业者，从而推进反思性行为现实主义。
Viglia et al. (Citation2024) argue that tourism scholars should move beyond self-reported intentions and focus on measuring “real behavior”, highlighting behavior as the necessary reference point for sustainability outcomes. Their call is timely and persuasive, and this commentary takes it as its starting point rather than as a position to be contested. Building on this agenda, the paper proposes three extensions that deepen behavioral realism. First, behavioral evidence is always mediated rather than purely objective: behavioral data are shaped by technological infrastructures, institutional power, and the politics of observation. Second, intentions are not alternatives to behavior but indispensable explanatory resources for understanding the meanings, values, and moral negotiations that give observed actions their social and ethical significance. Third, behavioral realism must be broadened beyond tourists to include the “real behaviors” of hospitality and tourism workers whose daily labor enables sustainable practices. Extending behavioral analysis to labor, management, and institutions reveals sustainability as a relational and collective achievement rather than an individual outcome. Moreover, the infrastructures required to measure behavior are unequally distributed, raising questions of epistemic justice and methodological privilege. The paper, therefore, advances reflexive behavioral realism as an extension of behavioral research – an approach that strengthens empirical rigor by integrating interpretation, ethical awareness, and a broader conception of who and what counts as behavioral subjects.