What do YOU know? 'Unaware academics'

Abstract

The awareness of climate change has grown since the first signs of change. The amount of air travelling has also grown dramatically, both for leisure and business, due to aeroplanes providing everybody with a chance to travel faster and longer. We wanted to research if academics, at the Norwegian Hotel School in Stavanger had more knowledge about climate change and the effect traveling had on the environment. In addition, since tourism is the main subject field of the school how the issue affected the academics travel behaviour on a personal level was addresses as well. The research was conducted in a constructivist epistemological approach. 13 in depth interviews were conducted to collect the data in April/May 2013 in Stavanger. The interviews show that the academics had different views on how important climate change was as an issue for their travel behaviour. Some was in a denial stage and had no worries or plans to change. Although a few did acknowledge that it was an issue, most of our participants did not take the issue too seriously.