Walking the Walk: Paying for Environmentally-Responsible Travel
By: Tom Mercer on 10 10, 2007
So after my last post, I got to thinking. What does it mean in practice to try to reduce your environmental impact (or “budget”) when you’re on vacation. Well, one obstacle is that some environmentally-friendly choices aren’t available in some travel destinations (and stay tuned for much more on that subject soon), and another common obstacle is that making those “simple green choices” can actually INCREASE the price we pay for services on the road.
For example, it’s great that Avis now offers both the Prius and Nissan Altima Hybrid for rent (leaving aside that their “Cool Cars” fleet also includes gas guzzlers like the Hummer H3), but if you rent a Prius at San Francisco airport, you’ll pay $73 per day rack rate versus $63 per day for a regular full size car. A $10 premium. Or how about offsetting your emissions for that next flight from New York to London. There’s another $10 plus if you buy an offset at TerraPass.
One of the reasons more and more large corporations are offering environmentally-friendly products is that they believe you, the customer, will pay a little bit extra for them and therefore cover any extra costs they may have along the way.
Well, the Travel Industry Association released a press release at the end of last week (Thanks for the link, Yen!), suggesting that most travelers want to purchase environmentally-friendly services on the road, but only 13% said they would pay more for them. 56% said they might pay more. However, 76% percent of those polled said they would pay less than 10 percent more. This story was also picked up in the St. Petersburg Times.
It’s obvious from trying to make sense of the data that this poll was poorly designed, but it does get at a crucial question: are we willing to spend more for environmental responsibility? Nearly everyone in this poll considered him or herself an environmentalist, but do our spending habits tell the same story?
4 Responses
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I think you have asked an excellent question. Will consumers pay more to save the environment? As much as I’d like to believe they will, the reality is that it is human nature to be short-sighted and pocket book focused. There needs to be additional perceived value other than saving the environment for most people to do the right thing - be it brand association, health improvement, or government regulation. I am optimistic that businesses will be creative enough to create that perceived value.
Great point, Cindy. I totally agree. Environmentally friendliness is not enough. Folks like Method, for example, also need to just create a fantastic product - one that people would want to buy regardless of the environmental benefits.
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