Airline travel is a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change, amounting to about 4% of all global greenhouse gas emissions every year. Airlines must take specific measures to reduce, and ideally neutralise, their greenhouse gas emissions and environmental footprint. The airline industry and air travellers are aware of this. However, the question of who should pay for the transition to green air travel is still under debate.
Charging consumers for benefits is not new. For example, the user-pays principle has been adopted to fund road infrastructure through road tolls.
But if the findings of our survey of airline travellers in South Africa are anything to go by, airline users don’t want to pay for airlines to become more environmentally friendly.
