Flygskam and its implications for sustainable tourism: a social media analysis of the flight shaming

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003388593-12

The phenomenon referred to as flygskam, which may be literally translated as “flying shame”, is the focus of this proposed chapter. This flygskam movement was initially started in Sweden, but it has since spread to a number of countries all over the world, despite only having a small amount of traction in the countries that are geographically adjacent to Sweden, such as Finland, Denmark, and Norway. In an era in which there is an imminent problem caused by climate change, the objective of the flygskam movement is to develop an action that will persuade people to avoid flying by shaming them on social media whenever flight praise sharing appears. The flygskam movement aims to raise awareness about the negative consequences that flying has on the environment. Researchers have shown interest in the flygskam movement; however, the majority of their efforts have been concentrated on applying more conventional research methods, such as interviewing people about their thoughts on how they understand the movement and how it influences the travel decisions they make. Research focused either on consumers, industry players, news coverage or social media practices but did not present a broad perspective to suggest a comprehensive conceptual model in between the different actors and media involved. This chapter’s objective is to provide the reader with a state-of-the-art review of present research and aims to contribute to the emerging research by suggesting an inclusive conceptual framework, which we further aim to test with data retrieved from social media. Given that the movement is disseminated through social media for consumer choices in the physical world, the implication of our research is particularly important to account for both actual and virtual behavioural patterns unfolding.