Swedish air travellers and voluntary carbon offsets: towards the co-creation of environmental value?

Abstract

There is now a broad consensus that aviation is a significant contributor to global warming. One question that thus arises is whether voluntary carbon-offsetting schemes can make a significant contribution to mitigating the contribution of aviation to climate change. These schemes have seen considerable growth in recent years, even though the overall amount of emissions offset remains negligible: tour operators and airlines offering voluntary carbon offsets report that customers show limited interested in these schemes. In the light of this, the article seeks to discuss the implications of voluntary carbon-offsetting schemes as a means of compensating emissions from aviation, and goes on to assess air travellers' knowledge of and attitudes to these schemes. Structural problems that have to be overcome to create broader interest in voluntary carbon offsetting are discussed in the context of co-creation of environmental value at the level of economic transactions between individual passengers (consumers) and airlines (producers), based on a survey of Swedish air travellers.