Consumer hypocrisy and researcher myopia: a scrutiny of the intention-behaviour gap in sustainable tourism

A discrepancy between tourists' intentions and behaviour threatens the effectiveness of interventions to favour sustainable choices. To reduce the gap between intentions and behaviour, one should consider both the consumer's and the researcher's shortcomings. On the one hand, consumers amplify the discrepancy between their sayings and doings through their hypocritical behaviour. On the other hand, researchers often aggravate the intention-behaviour gap because of their methodological myopia (e.g., by focusing on non-behavioural outcomes, or by working with unrealistic research settings). This paper offers some specific recommendations to address consumer hypocrisy. We also provide researchers with some methodological advice on how to minimise possible biases by i) defining ambitious research goals, ii) mitigating the researcher's invasiveness, and iii) adopting strong behavioural measures.