Mediating climate change agency: A grounded theory of travellers' climate change perceptions and influences on travel behaviours

Within scientific and policy debates, climate change has been identified as a serious threat to the world’s societies, environments, and economies. As one of the world’s largest industries, tourism is dependent on destinations’ natural and built environments in order to fulfil people’s travel desires. Besides predicted potential climate change threats to tourism industries and destinations, tourism has also been identified as a contributor to climate change based on its dependence on fossil fuelbased modes of transportation and energy-dependent tourism operations. Tourism policies address such threats and contributions predominantly through focussing on industry adaptation and mitigation, as well as envisioning the adoption of sustainable tourism criteria. From an industry point of view, however, it is pivotal to understand how climate change threats to tourism as well as tourism’s contributions to climate change will effect travellers’ decisions and travel behaviours. Travellers’ voices, however, tend to be unheard in tourism policy, industry, and research discourses. Travellers’ perceptions, therefore, were the focus of this research.