Hotels have long encouraged guests to reuse towels, reduce linen changes, and conserve energy, but tourism continues to generate substantial carbon emissions. Voluntary sustainability initiatives have achieved only limited success in changing traveller behaviour over the long term. New research from Hanyang University suggests that directly linking accommodation costs to the environmental impact of a guest’s stay may provide a more effective way to encourage sustainable choices. The study found that when travellers faced prices reflecting their resource consumption, they reported stronger intentions to conserve energy and water during their stay.

Professor Hakseung Shin of the School of Tourism at Hanyang University led the research. Published online on 22 May 2026 and appearing in Volume 119 of Annals of Tourism Research on 1 July 2026, the study examined whether carbon-based pricing could motivate environmentally responsible behaviour. According to Prof. Shin, sustainability challenges cannot be solved through moral appeals or regulation alone. Instead, he argues that environmental goals should be aligned with market incentives through what he describes as “green capitalism”, allowing pricing mechanisms to encourage lower-impact consumption.

To investigate this idea, the researchers conducted three experiments using realistic hotel and short-term rental booking scenarios. Participants were presented with accommodation options in which charges reflected resource use, including electricity, water, heating, cooling, and linen services. Different pricing structures were tested to determine how they influenced intentions to conserve resources. Some participants faced additional charges for excessive consumption, while others received discounts for using fewer resources. The experiments also compared pricing in which environmental costs were displayed separately with pricing in which those costs were included within the overall accommodation price.

Across all three experiments, carbon-based pricing consistently increased participants’ intentions to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours. Travellers who knew that excessive resource consumption would increase their accommodation costs expressed stronger intentions to reduce their environmental impact. The findings also showed that discount-based incentives encouraged conservation to a similar extent as surcharge-based pricing, providing some of the first experimental evidence that market-based environmental pricing can positively influence sustainability decisions in tourism.

The presentation of environmental costs also played an important role. Participants responded more strongly when additional resource use resulted in a clearly identified surcharge than when lower consumption produced an equivalent discount. Likewise, separately itemised environmental charges generated stronger conservation intentions than costs bundled into a single accommodation price. According to Prof. Shin, these findings suggest that making environmental costs more visible could strengthen their influence on consumer decision-making. He noted that carbon-based pricing systems could be implemented across hotels, Airbnb properties, and tourism booking platforms to encourage lower-impact travel behaviour.

The researchers believe carbon-based pricing could become increasingly practical as smart technologies make it easier to monitor individual resource consumption. Integrating environmental costs into accommodation pricing may help travellers consider the carbon consequences of their choices while supporting the transition to a lower-carbon tourism sector. Prof. Shin predicts that advances in smart technologies and carbon tracking over the next five to ten years could make personalised carbon pricing a common feature of tourism. The authors caution, however, that their study relied on hypothetical booking scenarios and measured behavioural intentions rather than actual behaviour, highlighting the need for future research to evaluate whether these effects are replicated in real-world travel settings.

More information: Hakseung Shin et al, Paying for carbon: CO₂-based pricing mechanisms and pro-environmental behavior in tourism, Annals of Tourism Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2026.104209

Journal information: Annals of Tourism Research Provided by Hanyang University Research Strategy Planning Team