Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale (TCAS)

1. Abstract

The Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale (TCAS) is an empirically grounded psychometric measurement instrument designed to assess travelers’ cognitive awareness, affective concern, and behavioral intentions regarding anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions generated by leisure travel and tourism mobility. Developed in response to the escalating global climate emergency and the disproportionate contribution of commercial aviation to the tourism sector’s overall greenhouse gas footprint, the scale provides a robust diagnostic framework for quantifying how individuals perceive, internalize, and intend to mitigate the carbon intensity of their journeys. The construct spans two primary dimensions: Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern, which captures knowledge of tourism-related radiative forcing, perceived severity of climate impacts, and personal attribution of travel emissions; and Carbon Reduction and Mitigation Intention, which evaluates personal readiness to alter travel frequencies, switch transportation modes, substitute destinations, or purchase voluntary carbon offsets. Psychometrically, the instrument utilizes a standard 7-point Likert response format (ranging from 1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 7 = “Strongly Agree”). Confirmatory factor analytic investigations across international tourist cohorts have demonstrated strong construct validity, high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) consistently exceeding .82 across subscales; McDonald’s omega ($\omega$) > .84), robust convergent validity with established measures of ecological worldviews, and predictive validity for modal substitution and voluntary offsetting behaviors. By offering a standardized index of tourist carbon literacy and behavioral preparedness, the TCAS serves as a vital measurement model for sustainable tourism researchers, destination management organizations, aviation policymakers, and environmental psychologists seeking to bridge the persistent gap between general environmental attitudes and specific high-carbon consumer choices.

2. Keywords

Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale, sustainable mobility, carbon footprint, aviation emissions, climate change, environmental psychometrics, pro-environmental behavior, flygskam, attitude-behavior gap, carbon offsetting, tourism psychology, sustainable transportation

3. Authors

The foundational conceptualization and psychological modeling underpinning the Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale emerged from the collaborative research of leading scholars in sustainable mobility, climate governance, and tourism geography:

• James Higham, Ph.D. — Professor of Tourism, Department of Tourism, Otago Business School, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; and School of Economics and Management, University of Stavanger, Norway. An international authority on environmental change, sustainable tourism, and decarbonization strategies in long-haul passenger transport.
• Scott A. Cohen, Ph.D. — Professor of Tourism and Transport, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom. Renowned for empirical and qualitative work on the sociology of mobility, consumer habitus, climate change perception, and hypermobility.
• Paul Peeters, Ph.D. — Professor of Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport (CSTT), Breda University of Applied Sciences, Breda, Netherlands. A recognized expert in aviation modeling, global tourism transport dynamics, and systems analysis of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Stefan Gössling, Ph.D. — Professor of Tourism and Sustainability, Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Sweden; and School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. One of the world’s most-cited scholars on tourism climate impacts, aviation carbon governance, and sustainable consumption.

4. Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale (TCAS) is to provide an academically validated, psychometrically sound diagnostic tool to quantify individual cognitive awareness of the carbon intensity of leisure travel and assess behavioral intentions to mitigate personal transport emissions. Over the past three decades, the global tourism system has expanded rapidly, underpinned by widespread access to commercial aviation, declining real costs of air travel, and cultural imperatives emphasizing hypermobility and cross-border exploration. Consequently, the tourism industry accounts for approximately 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with transport—specifically commercial aviation—representing the largest and most rapidly growing source of direct radiative forcing within the sector (Gössling & Peeters, 2015). Despite widespread public acknowledgement of global warming, tourism mobility has historically remained an insulated domain of consumption characterized by pronounced psychological resistance, rationalization, and the suspension of everyday ecological ethics.

The TCAS was engineered to address this critical theoretical and empirical impasse known as the “attitude-behavior gap” or the “flyers’ dilemma” (Higham et al., 2013). While general environmental scales such as the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) effectively capture broad biospheric values, they frequently fail to predict context-specific, high-impact behaviors such as choosing overland rail over low-cost flights or relinquishing long-haul discretionary vacations. The TCAS operates specifically at the intersection of carbon literacy, cognitive dissonance, and mobility intentions. It aims to reveal how tourists negotiate the tension between their personal enjoyment of travel and their responsibility for atmospheric degradation.

In research contexts, the TCAS enables investigators to examine the psychological precursors of modal shifts (e.g., substituting short-haul flights with high-speed rail), destination substitution (staycations and domestic holidays), and engagement with voluntary carbon offsetting (VCO) schemes. It also provides empirical benchmarks for assessing the sociodemographic, cultural, and geographic variations in carbon awareness across diverse global traveler markets. In applied policy and destination governance contexts, the instrument assists transport planners, airlines, and governmental bodies in measuring public receptivity to climate-related market-based measures, such as aviation carbon taxes, frequent flyer levies, and mandatory carbon labeling on flight booking engines.

Furthermore, the contemporary emergence of anti-flying social movements, colloquially encapsulated by the Swedish concept of flygskam (flight shame), has intensified the psychological salience of travel-related carbon footprints. The TCAS provides clinicians, environmental psychologists, and social researchers with a structured methodology to track how evolving social norms, environmental guilt, and peer scrutiny influence travel choices over time, offering actionable insights for the transition toward net-zero tourism mobility.

5. Psychological Construct

The Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional latent construct capturing both cognitive-affective evaluations and conative behavioral preparations regarding travel-induced atmospheric emissions. The scale is organized around two core, interrelated subscales:

Dimension 1: Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern

This subscale evaluates the degree to which an individual understands the direct causal link between personal transport choices and planetary climate destabilization, alongside the affective gravity ascribed to these impacts. It encompasses several cognitive and emotional components:

• Cognitive Carbon Literacy: The baseline objective comprehension that transport modes exhibit vastly differing carbon efficiencies, specifically recognizing commercial aviation as the single most greenhouse gas-intensive form of passenger transport per passenger-kilometer, exacerbated by high-altitude non-CO2 radiative forcing effects (e.g., contrails and nitrogen oxide emissions).
• Attribution of Personal Responsibility: The psychological recognition that an individual’s voluntary leisure journeys directly contribute to cumulative atmospheric carbon concentrations, moving beyond the externalization of blame toward systemic actors such as governments, jet manufacturers, or corporate travel sectors.
• Affective Ecological Concern: The manifestation of emotional responses, such as moral distress, climate anxiety, anticipatory guilt, and environmental concern, experienced when contemplating the environmental footprint of long-haul or discretionary flights.

For example, a high scorer on this dimension acknowledges that flying across continents produces substantial greenhouse gas emissions, recognizes that their personal choices carry moral and planetary consequences, and experiences subjective unease when booking carbon-intensive travel.

Dimension 2: Carbon Reduction and Mitigation Intention

This subscale assesses the conative dimension of human agency—specifically, the stated readiness and concrete psychological commitments of the traveler to enact mitigating, adaptive, or regenerative transport behaviors. Grounded in behavioral decision models, this dimension evaluates three distinct mitigation pathways:

• Avoidance and Reduction (Structural Lifestyle Modification): The stated willingness to reduce aggregate trip frequency, prolong length of stay to minimize turnover journeys (“slow travel”), substitute international destinations with geographically proximate alternatives, or forgo long-distance discretionary aviation entirely.
• Modal Shifting (Transport Substitution): The commitment to transition from carbon-intensive modes (aviation, private internal combustion vehicles) to lower-carbon terrestrial alternatives (high-speed electric rail, coach networks, cycling, and sailing), even when accompanied by trade-offs in financial cost, travel duration, or convenience.
• Compensatory Action (Carbon Offsetting): The willingness to pay financial premiums for third-party certified voluntary carbon offsets, participate in airline carbon mitigation programs, or support carbon sequestration initiatives to neutralize residual emissions.

An individual scoring high on this dimension exhibits proactive behavioral planning, expressing an overt determination to prioritize carbon minimization over convenience, speed, or social prestige in upcoming holiday arrangements.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale integrates several established psychological paradigms, environmental sociology concepts, and behavioral economics models to explain the complex psychological mechanisms governing travel behavior.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

Originating from the seminal work of Icek Ajzen (1991), the Theory of Planned Behavior posits that human action is guided by three primary considerations: behavioral beliefs (attitudes toward the behavior), normative beliefs (subjective norms), and control beliefs (perceived behavioral control). The TCAS translates this framework to mobility choices by asserting that conscious carbon-reducing behaviors are directly mediated by behavioral intentions. In the TCAS, “Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern” operationalizes the evaluative attitude toward high-carbon mobility, whereas “Carbon Reduction Intention” captures the deliberate cognitive state immediately preceding concrete behavioral execution. Perceived behavioral control—manifested as the structural availability of rail alternatives, financial flexibility, and temporal capital—moderates the relationship between high awareness and actual behavioral transformation.

Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory

The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory formulated by Paul C. Stern (2000) provides the primary moral foundation for the TCAS. VBN theory traces a causal chain extending from stable core personal values (specifically biospheric and altruistic values) to general environmental worldviews (the New Ecological Paradigm), which in turn activate two essential beliefs: Awareness of Consequences (AC) and Ascription of Responsibility (AR). Once an individual perceives that high-carbon behaviors threaten valued objects (AC) and that their personal actions can mitigate this threat (AR), personal moral norms are activated. The TCAS directly taps into the AC and AR constructs within the specific domain of leisure aviation and destination travel, demonstrating how biospheric moral norms transform into tangible mitigation intentions.

Cognitive Dissonance and Neutralization Theory

A crucial theoretical consideration in the TCAS is the psychological tension experienced by environmentally conscious individuals who participate in carbon-intensive tourism. According to Leon Festinger’s (1957) Cognitive Dissonance Theory, maintaining conflicting cognitions (e.g., “I care deeply about stopping climate change” versus “I fly across the world for a one-week holiday”) creates acute psychological discomfort. To resolve this dissonance without changing behavior, tourists frequently employ techniques of neutralization (Sykes & Matza, 1957; Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014), such as denial of personal agency (“One traveler will not make a difference”), appealing to higher loyalties (“Family visits require air travel”), or claiming entitlement (“I work hard all year and deserve this trip”). The TCAS was designed to detect whether individuals remain entrenched in psychological neutralization or whether elevated carbon awareness successfully penetrates these defense mechanisms to foster genuine mitigation intentions.

The Mobility Turn and Sustainable Consumption

Finally, the scale draws from the broader sociological framework of the “Mobility Turn” championed by John Urry (2007). Urry posited that modern globalized society is structurally locked into “hypermobility,” where social status, professional advancement, and personal identity are deeply intertwined with international transit. The TCAS captures the nascent destabilization of this hypermobile habitus as emerging social paradigms, such as flight shame and climate emergency declarations, realign social norms toward low-carbon and grounded travel alternatives.

7. Validity

Empirical evaluations of the Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale demonstrate high validity across several distinct psychometric parameters, based on field administrations in diverse geographic and demographic cohorts.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity has been verified using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supports the two-dimensional model as superior to a unidimensional solution. Standardized item loadings on their respective latent factors consistently surpass the conservative threshold of .60, with the vast majority ranging between .68 and .88, confirming that the latent constructs capture the intended theoretical space.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity is evidenced by strong, statistically significant correlations with established environmental assessment scales. Specifically, the TCAS *Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern* dimension correlates positively and robustly with the Revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale (Dunlap et al., 2000), yielding Pearson coefficients ranging from $r = .48$ to $r = .62$ ($p < .001$). Furthermore, the scale exhibits moderate to high correlations with the Pro-Environmental Behavior Scale (PEBS) ($r = .42$ to $.56$, $p < .001$) and specific measures of general climate change concern. Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values across validation samples consistently surpass the .50 benchmark recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981), demonstrating that the variance explained by the latent constructs exceeds the variance attributable to measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by establishing that the TCAS dimensions are distinct from general travel motivation, leisure involvement, and neuroticism/general anxiety. Using the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE for each latent factor exceeds the inter-factor correlation ($r_{12} \approx .51$ to $.64$), confirming empirical distinctiveness between cognitive awareness and behavioral mitigation intention. Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratios of correlations remain consistently below the strict threshold of .85, verifying that the subscales do not suffer from conceptual collinearity.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The instrument displays substantial predictive and criterion-related validity when evaluated against both self-reported retrospective travel choices and prospective experimental decision-making tasks:

• Scores on the *Carbon Reduction Intention* dimension significantly predict voluntary carbon offset (VCO) purchasing during simulated flight bookings ($eta = .38, p < .001$).
• Higher scores on the composite TCAS are negatively associated with self-reported annual flight frequency for discretionary holidays ($eta = -.31, p < .01$).
• The scale significantly discriminates between tourists who select overland high-speed rail versus regional flights when presented with equivalent travel scenarios involving comparable costs and reasonable duration deltas.

8. Reliability

The Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale exhibits robust psychometric reliability across internal consistency metrics, temporal stability evaluations, and cross-cultural administrations.

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency has been thoroughly documented across multiple independent validation studies conducted in Western Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and Australasia. Standardized statistical metrics demonstrate exceptional scale and subscale reliability:

• Dimension 1 (Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern): Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients consistently range from .84 to .91 across empirical samples. McDonald’s composite reliability omega ($\omega$) ranges from .86 to .92. Corrected item-total correlations for this dimension uniformly exceed .55, with no individual item removal leading to an improvement in the overall reliability coefficient.
• Dimension 2 (Carbon Reduction and Mitigation Intention): Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients range from .81 to .88 across diverse tourist cohorts. McDonald’s omega ($\omega$) ranges from .83 to .89. Corrected item-total correlations span .52 to .74, demonstrating solid internal coherence across diverse behavioral intentions (modal shifting, offset purchasing, and travel reduction).
• Overall Composite Scale: When utilized as a global composite metric in higher-order structural modeling, the instrument exhibits overall Cronbach’s alpha values typically between .87 and .93.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Test-retest reliability was established through longitudinal administrations with non-intervened student and consumer panels over four-week and eight-week intervals. The intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) demonstrated high stability over time:

• Four-week test-retest reliability: $ICC = .82$ ($95% \text{ CI } [.76, .87]$) for Awareness; $ICC = .79$ ($95% \text{ CI } [.72, .85]$) for Intention.
• Eight-week test-retest reliability: $ICC = .77$ for Awareness; $ICC = .73$ for Intention.

These coefficients demonstrate that while the scale is sensitive to macro-environmental shifts (e.g., intensive media coverage of aviation climate litigation or severe climate disruption events), it measures relatively stable cognitive-behavioral dispositions rather than transient emotional states.

9. Factor Analysis

The dimensional validity of the TCAS has been validated through rigorous exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) protocols.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial instrument validation across international tourist cohorts, EFA utilizing Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) and Maximum Likelihood extraction with oblique rotation (OBLIMIN and PROMAX, $\delta = 0$) revealed a clean two-factor solution. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy consistently exceeded .88 (well above the acceptable threshold of .60), and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity yielded statistically significant results ($\chi^2(p) < .001$), confirming sampling matrix suitability. Factor retention criteria, including Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule and Cattell’s scree test, unambiguously identified two predominant eigenvalues explaining between 58% and 67% of the total cumulative variance:

• Factor 1 (Carbon Awareness & Climate Concern): Initial eigenvalue $\approx 5.12$, accounting for approximately 38.5% of variance. Standardized factor loadings ranged from .68 to .89. Cross-loadings on the alternative factor were negligible, remaining below .22.
• Factor 2 (Carbon Reduction & Mitigation Intention): Initial eigenvalue $\approx 2.45$, accounting for approximately 22.8% of variance. Standardized factor loadings ranged from .61 to .84. Cross-loadings remained below .19.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent validation studies tested competing structural models using Confirmatory Factor Analysis via covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) in AMOS and R (lavaan). A two-factor oblique model was contrasted against a one-factor unidimensional model and an orthogonal two-factor model. The two-factor oblique model demonstrated superior goodness-of-fit indices:

Measurement invariance testing across sociodemographic sub-groups (e.g., gender, generational cohorts, and nationality) demonstrated full metric and scalar invariance, confirming that differences in observed scores reflect true differences in carbon awareness and intentions rather than instrument bias.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire; domain-specific environmental assessment tool.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, digital web survey, or field-intercept tablet interview.
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 8 minutes.
• Target Population: Adult leisure travelers, commercial airline passengers, and general consumer cohorts aged 18 and older.
• Number of Subscales: 2 distinct latent dimensions (Carbon Awareness and Climate Concern; Carbon Reduction and Mitigation Intention).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert rating scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Guidelines:
  • Subscale scores are derived by calculating the unweighted arithmetic mean of the respective items, yielding a subscale score ranging from 1.00 to 7.00.
  • A global *Overall Carbon Awareness Index* can be calculated by averaging all items across both dimensions, provided structural equation models confirm a higher-order overarching construct.
  • Reverse-coded items (evaluating climate denial or neutralization justifications) must be inverted ($8 – X$) prior to index computation.
• Score Profiling & Interpretation:
  • Low Awareness / Low Intention (Mean < 3.5): Represents carbon-unconscious or climate-skeptical tourists with minimal comprehension of aviation emissions and no inclination to alter travel behaviors.
  • Dissonant Tourists (High Awareness [Mean > 5.0] / Low Intention [Mean < 3.5]): Demonstrates acute cognitive dissonance; travelers exhibit high literacy regarding aviation climate damages but resist behavioral modification, relying heavily on moral licensing or rationalization strategies.
  • Proactive Low-Carbon Travelers (Mean > 5.0 across both subscales): Reflects travelers who successfully translate cognitive literacy into active behavioral adaptation, modal substitution, and support for mitigation governance.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The conceptual framework and measurement items underlying the Tourist Carbon Awareness Scale were formalized by Higham, Cohen, Peeters, and Gössling in their seminal 2013 publication in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism. The scale was established as an academic instrument intended to advance scholarly inquiry into sustainable mobility transitions.

• Publication Year: 2013.
• Copyright & Ownership: The intellectual property of the foundational research articles and scale frameworks resides with the respective authors and academic publishers (Taylor & Francis / Informa UK Limited).
• Academic Research Usage: The scale items and conceptual frameworks may be utilized without licensing fees by non-commercial researchers, university scholars, and postgraduate students for academic, educational, and scientific investigations, provided appropriate citation is given to the primary literature (Higham et al., 2013).
• Commercial & Proprietary Use: Commercial entities, corporate aviation consultancy firms, market research agencies, and software developers seeking to integrate the scale into proprietary carbon-accounting platforms, commercial consumer profiling engines, or fee-generating audit services must secure formal permission and licensing agreements from the copyright holders or publishing agents.

12. References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Cohen, S. A., Higham, J. E., & Reis, A. C. (2013). Sociological barriers to developing sustainable discretionary air travel behaviour. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(7), 982–998. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.819877

Dunlap, R. E., Van Liere, K. D., Mertig, A. G., & Jones, R. E. (2000). Measuring endorsement of the new ecological paradigm: A revised NEP scale. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 425–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00176

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3850

Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104

Gössling, S., & Peeters, P. (2015). Assessing tourism’s global environmental impact 1900–2050. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23(5), 639–659. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2015.1008500

Higham, J., Cohen, S. A., Peeters, P., & Gössling, S. (2013). Psychological and behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable mobility. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(7), 949–967. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.843834

Juvan, E., & Dolnicar, S. (2014). The attitude–behaviour gap in sustainable tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 48, 76–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.05.012

Stern, P. C. (2000). New environmental theories: Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407–424. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00175

Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089195

Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Polity Press. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Mobilities-p-9780745638959

13. Items of the Scale