PhD student Emil Juvan, from the UQ Business School, said the subjects of the study displayed an “attitude-behaviour gap” when abroad, despite being aware of the negative environmental consequences.

“This research shows there is little evidence to suggest that people consider the environmental costs of their holiday, nor do their environmental concerns influence their holiday choices,” he said.

Mr Juvan’s paper, The Attitude – Behaviour Gap in Sustainable Tourism, revealed some of the excuses people came up with for ignoring the environmental consequences of their behaviour, including a denial of responsibility and control.

The paper has been published in the journal Annals of Tourism Research.

“These categories present a promising starting point for developing interventions that will prevent tourists from using excuses for not making the right choices,” Mr Juvan said.

“An environmentally unsustainable tourism industry is not only harmful to the environment, but also to its own future as it depletes the very resources tourists come to enjoy.”

Mr Juvan’s PhD supervisor, Sara Dolnicar, said a lot of previous sustainable tourism research assumed people could be “trained and re-educated”.

“Emil’s work takes a totally different perspective,” Professor Dolnicar said.

“It accepts that people tend to find excuses for not doing the right thing.

“This is an extremely important piece of research because it makes the first step towards increasing the level of environmentally friendly behaviour of tourists while at the same time accepting that such behaviour does not come naturally to people who are investing a lot of time and money to relax and be free of the typical worries they have at home.”