An Innovative Lens on Green Tourism: A Narrative Review of Cognitive Dissonance in Sustainable Tourism Development
Abstract
Despite growing concern over sustainability, value–behaviour inconsistencies remain widespread in tourism, highlighting a need for conceptual clarity. Therefore, an inductive thematic synthesis was utilized to analyse how cognitive dissonance is conceptualized, triggered, and resolved across various green tourism contexts. Three thematic main strands emerged: (1) value–behaviour inconsistency, (2) green identity and group influence, and (3) situational constraints and greenwashing. Tourists often maintain a green self-image despite contradictory behaviour, influenced by group norms, destination cues, and infrastructural limitations. The findings highlight that destination managers and marketers must reduce behavioural friction and ensure that sustainability claims are authentic and actionable. Theoretically, the review contributes a conceptual map of cognitive dissonance in green tourism, highlighting how dissonance emerges and is managed.
Keywords: cognitive dissonance, green tourism, sustainable tourist behaviour, value–behaviour gap, pro-environmental travel
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Kevin Fuchs
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
1. Copyright
Copyright for all articles published in Academica Turistica - Tourism and Innovation Journal is held by individual authors. Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources.
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete the Publication Agreement and Copyright Licence, based on the Open Access Model Publishing Agreement.
Articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
Under the terms of this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. They can archive the pre-print and post-print or publisher's version of their work. They will, however, assign to Academica Turistica - Tourism and Innovation Journal (AT–TIJ) the permanent right to electronically distribute their manuscript and, after it has appeared in AT–TIJ, they may republish their text as long as they clearly acknowledge AT–TIJ as the place of the original publication.
2. Author Fees
Article submission, processing and/or publishing fees are not charged.
