A louder call Over a decade ago, the United Nations’ established the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative to prompt a radical overhaul of how responsibility, ethics and sustainability are treated in higher education, particularly in relation to the business, management and organisation studies fields (Wall, 2017). By 2017, although there are now a range of radical responses available (Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang, 2015; Wall and Jarvis, 2015; Wall, 2016; Wall, Bellamy, Evans, Hopkins, 2017; Wall, Hindley, Hunt, Peach, Preston, Hartley and Fairbank, 2017; Wall, Russell, Moore, 2017; Wall, Clough, Österlind, Hindley, 2018), evidence suggests that little as has changed on a global or even national scale (Wall, Hindley, Hunt, Peach, Preston, Hartley and Fairbank, 2017), and there remain urgent calls at the highest levels of the United Nations for higher education to help promote responsibility, ethics and sustainability in education (UNESCO, 2016; Wall, 2018).

Ethical decisions to visit disappearing destinations are self-serving and influences feed into self-interest. Data were collected from a sample of pre-, during- and post-visit tourists to Venice and Svalbard, using expressive techniques and scenarios using the Hunt–Vitell model to understand ethical decisions, and the constructive technique and collage to understand influences. The results show that travel decisions are driven by individual selfishness, and any threat to freedom (i.e. the right to travel) is underplayed. The preferred scenario for long-term benefit for planet and people is via short-term economic and social negative impacts on the destination’s locals, rather than the tourists’ own experience. Respondents believe that they are blameless for their purchasing habits as they lack perceived behavioural control, and instead corporations ought to be providing sustainable products as the norm and not sell products that harm. In the scenarios, where respondents express concern for the locals in a disappearing destination (i.e. if we do not visit, they will not benefit from our expenditure), individual selfishness to visit could be the driver, rather than an altruistic act to provide support. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the continuing dearth of scholarship about the role of work based learning in education for sustainable development, and particularly the urgent demands of climate literacy. It is proposed that forms of work based learning can act as catalysts for wider cultural change, towards embedding climate literacy in higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws data from action research to present a case study of a Climate Change Project conducted through a work based learning module at a mid-sized university in the United Kingdom. Findings: Contrary to the predominantly fragmented and disciplinary bounded approaches to sustainability and climate literacy, the case study demonstrates how a form of work based learning can create a unifying vision for action, and do so across multiple disciplinary, professional service, and identity boundaries. In addition, the project generated indicators of cultural change including extensive faculty level climate change resources, creative ideas for an innovative mobile application, and new infrastructural arrangements to further develop practice and research in climate change. Research limitations/implications: Practical implications: This paper provides an illustrative example of how a pan-faculty work based learning module can act as a catalyst for change at a higher education institution. Originality/value: This paper is a contemporary call for action to stimulate and expedite climate literacy in higher education, and is the first to propose that certain forms of work based learning curricula can be a route to combating highly bounded and fragmented approaches, towards a unified and boundary-crossing approach.

The demands placed on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to deliver sustainability initiatives alongside their long-standing social responsibility commitments has been recognised in literature. However, how these interrelate in practice continues to be relatively unexplored. The extant literature suggests that the integration of the two connected agendas can be problematic due to a range of factors, including a general lack of awareness or even misconceptions of the respective agendas. This paper explores the attitudes and practices related to the integration of social responsibility and sustainability initiatives at HEIs. Theoretically, this study highlights the ongoing relative positioning and importance of economic factors – as it relates to differentiation rather than integration – over others such as social responsibility and sustainability. The main implication of this study is that provide useful insights into how HEIs can closer integrate two contemporary but potentially competing agendas.

Tourists’ perceptions of climate change affect decisions and choices to visit destinations, which are disappearing because of climate change impacts. Values and motivations are two of the personal variables underpinning tourists’ decisions. The study addresses both the limited values research in tourism and reveals unconscious motives by using projective techniques. Projective techniques avoid some of the social desirability bias present in much ethical research. Choice ordering technique and the list of values assist by assigning importance, with narrative responses providing meaning. The construction technique builds a story from a stimulus, with photo-elicitation using participants’ personal holiday photographs. A sample of pre, during and post visit tourists to the Arctic and Venice were interviewed. Results, which provide a more nuanced understanding of how the personal variables of values and motivations are underpinned by selfinterest, inform policies and the messages designed to influence pro-sustainability behaviour.

This article proposes that reactance theory can be used to better understand how tourists’ perceptions of climate change affect their travel decisions. Reactance theory explains how individuals value their perceived freedom to make choices, and why they react negatively to any threats to their freedom. We study the psychological consequences of threatening tourist’s freedoms, using a range of projective techniques: directly, using photo expression, and indirectly, through collage, photo-interviewing and scenarios. We find that reactance theory helps to explain the extent of travel to two destinations: Svalbard and Venice, providing a nuanced understanding of how travellers restore their freedom to travel through three incremental stages: denying the climate change threat , reducing tensions arising from travel and heightening demand particularly for the most visibly threatened destinations. The theory suggests a fourth stage, helplessness, reached when consumers dismiss the value of destinations once they can no longer be enjoyed, but for which we, as yet, have no data. Reactance theory questions the validity of awareness raising campaigns as behavioural change vehicles, provides alternative explanations of why the most self-proclaimed, environmentally aware individuals travel frequently, and helps identify nuanced, socially acceptable forms of sustainability marketing, capable of reducing resistance to change.

An encyclopedia article related to work-integrated learning as a form of education for sustainable development.