The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia

Melissa Nursey-Bray; Robert Palmer; Bridie Meyer-Mclean; Thomas Wanner; Cris Birzer

doi:10.3390/su11092694

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The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia

Melissa Nursey-Bray, Robert Palmer, Bridie Meyer-Mclean, Thomas Wanner and Cris Birzer

Sustainability, Vol.11(9), 2694

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092694

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Abstract

Built Environment and Design

climate change

aeromobility

pro-environmental behavior

academics

attitude-behavior gap

Universities are both disseminators and producers of the climate knowledge needed to institute the social and cultural change required for climate adaptation and mitigation to occur. They also have the opportunity to lead and model pro-environmental behavior, yet often have large carbon budgets, partly caused by staff travel. This paper explores this topic via an institutional case study of what factors motivate the academic community to undertake plane travel and the implications this has for wielding wider societal influence in terms of pro-environmental behavior. We report on a year-long qualitative social science study of academic plane travel at the University of Adelaide, South Australia where we investigated the tension between academic requirements to travel and the institution's formal commitment to sustainability within the Campus Sustainability Plan. We found that, while many academics were worried about climate change, very few were willing to change their current practice and travel less because they are not institutionally incentivized to do so. There is a fear of not flying: plane travel is perceived as a key driver for career progression and this is an ongoing barrier to pro-environmental behavior. We conclude that institutional and political change will be required for individual change to occur and sustainable agendas to be met within academic communities.

Details

Title: The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia
Authors: Melissa Nursey-Bray (Author) - University of Adelaide
Robert Palmer (Author) - University of Adelaide
Bridie Meyer-Mclean (Author) - University of Adelaide
Thomas Wanner (Author) - University of Adelaide
Cris Birzer (Author) - University of Adelaide
Publication details: Sustainability, Vol.11(9), 2694
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2019
DOI: 10.3390/su11092694
ISSN: 2071-1050
Copyright note: Copyright © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; Sustainability Research Cluster
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99451460002621
Output Type: Journal article

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