Based on the needs illustrated above, with the BeST project we aimed to achieve the following objectives: - Develop a transnational community of practice network fostering knowledge exchange between professionals, researchers and educators to accelerate the use of behavioral sciences for policies and practices in tourism; - Raise awareness on the potential of the application of behavioural science to accelerate the transition of tourism towards net positive future; - Foster peer-to-peer learning between tourism sector practitioners and behavioural science experts; - Enable the identification of future research and cooperation paths related to the application of behavioural science to tourism. More specifically, we aimed to obtain the following concrete outcomes: - Creating the space for a virtual community of practitioners, experts and researchers interested in behavioural science and tourism; - Setting up a living knowledge hub with resources on applications of behavioural insights to addressing the tourism sustainability challenges; - Organising a series of webinars devoted to knowledge sharing & peer-to-peer learning about the application of behavioural science to tourism.
Tourism is a big contributor to the local economy in many countries, however the activities associated to it also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. In the current context, the majority of people are aware of the importance to promote sustainable ways of travelling and expect destinations to act more responsibly. However, when it comes to changing their actual behaviour, there is a big intention-action gap. The actors in the tourism ecosystem are aware of the importance to address human behaviour when it comes to sustainability. There is a great interest in the topic and destination managers, policy makers and tourism planners see the potential of adopting this approach when it comes to promoting more sustainable behaviours. However, the knowledge of human behaviour and of decision-making dynamics is still relatively out of their reach. We applied for this project to contribute to close this knowledge gap. The BeST project was designed with the aim to bring together experts of human behaviour and tourism actors, to create a community of practice that would allow to share knowledge, tools and case studies related to the application of behavioural approaches to tourism sustainability.