Air Travellers' Willingness to Pay for a Sustainable Offer: A Discrete Choice Experiment
Summary
Growing air travel demand requires for new sustainable solutions to be embraced by all players of the industry, including individual travellers. Due to the low adoption rates recorded for current voluntary carbon offset solutions, the level of success of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) among travellers is difficult to predict, despite its potential to reduce up to 80% CO2 emissions. Additionally, few studies address the large gap between individuals’ attitude and behavior towards sustainability when travelling by air. Insights on 563 Dutch individuals’ preferences were obtained from a survey, by integrating a Discrete Choice Experiment into the Motivation-Opportunity- Ability model. The MOA model helped conceptualize air travellers’ consumption behavior, which in combination with DCE, allowed to determine individuals’ preferences based on choices they made. Moreover, this framework integration gave the possibility for individuals to be exposed to realistic scenario derived from their personal booking experience. A conditional logit model was used to describe the relative influence of factors, looking at their estimates and significance. Results show that a sustainable option’s price is the most influential factor for its adoption. The time efficiency provided by sustainable aviation fuel relative to ‘tree planting’ solutions also influenced the outcome. Regarding individual characteristics, air travellers’ level of motivation towards taking sustainable action positively influenced their choice, however their financial abilities had no effect. Other respondent characteristics such as gender, previous compensation behavior and flight time also influenced the probability to choose a SAF option. We argue that the most influential factors contributing to the increase in probability SAF adoption should be considered when marketing a SAF product in order to trigger behavioral change.