1 Introduction

Worldwide, 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced from petroleum, with growing tendency (Statista 2022a). This is due to its multifunctionality, as it is light, transparent, resistant, hygienic, and cheap (Heidbreder et al. 2019). In Germany alone, each person produces an average of 39.7 kg of plastic waste per year (Statista 2022b). This is not only detrimental to oil resources but also emits climate-damaging CO2 and pollutes the environment (Scherer et al. 2018). Each year, 4.8–12.7 million tonnes of plastic particles enter the world’s oceans (wwf 2022). The total amount of plastic in marine environments is estimated at 250,000 tonnes (Heidbreder et al. 2019). But mountain regions are also affected and require comprehensive waste management (Semernya et al. 2017). Germans took the most holiday trips across Europe in 2019, with primary destinations Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Italy and mainly on beaches there (Statista 2022c). Eagle et al. (2016) generally call for a strict rethinking of consumers during their holiday stay, whereby instruments of education and behavioural influence must first be examined for their effectiveness. Rodríguez-Antón and Alonso-Almeida (2019) see a solution in the mandatory enforcement of circular material use also in the hotel industry. Bauske and von Münchhausen (2019) derived from an expert study with hotel managers several appropriate measures, amongst others plastic avoidance or the use of reusable packaging.

The problem of excessive plastic consumption at maritime holiday destinations and the associated environmental pollution has been widely recognised and studied. Solutions already exist in everyday consumption, but a willingness to practise them on holiday does not seem self-evident. Obviously, holidays are a special situation in which consumers like to deviate from their principles. But also suppliers may not demand enough sustainable behaviour from their guests. This study sheds light on this problem by means of a consumer survey. The aim is to find out how pronounced Germans’ self-motivated plastic avoidance during holidays is and what role they expect providers to play. In particular, results should verify the avoidance measures derived by Bauske and von Münchhausen (2019) from their expert study, now from a consumer perspective. Suggestions for effective marketing to reduce plastic at the maritime holiday destination will also be derived. The paper has the following structure: Sect. 2 contextualises the measures from the Bauske/Münchhausen study with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and makes corresponding hypotheses about consumer behaviour, Sect. 3 explains the instruments and analytical methods to clarify the same, Sect. 4 presents the results, Sect. 5 discusses them in the light of the literature, and the last section draws a conclusion and gives recommendations for action.

2 Theoretical framework and hypotheses

Whether and why consumers and thus also tourists can be influenced by certain marketing measures in a decision-making situation and then show desired behaviour can be examined using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) according to Ajzen (1991). In line with this theory, the degree of consent to an offer depends on three categories. Under TPB-1, the offered product feature matches the personal attitude, which is why consumers then more readily accept the offer. Steenis et al. (2017) see in this category a strong trigger for active plastic avoidance efforts. According to TPB-2, it is the normative environment that puts pressure on consumers and demands desired action from them. In Heidbreder et al. (2019), this component is crucial when desirable activities are perceived particularly strongly in public spaces. Accordingly, at the resort, plastic avoidance measures would need to be actively demanded by hotel management, from communication measures to behavioural rules. Finally, TPB-3 becomes relevant when the decision situation for plastic avoidance behaviour appears to be very favourable, convenient, motivating, or beneficial, even though personal attitudes may be against it. For the resort, this could be stimulated by incentives, such as a reward system. All three categories make it clear that for tourists, plastic avoidance on vacation can be a result of external influences or self-motivated. These two drivers are now discussed in more detail.

2.1 Plastic avoidance by holiday providers or consumers

Figure 1 shows six potential plastic avoidance measures at the holiday destination, derived as a recommendation from the Bauske and Münchhausen study (2019). As can be seen, these can be taken by suppliers. This includes the replacement of plastic-based products (Accorsi et al. 2014). One could thus substitute portion packaging for soaps or jams with renewable raw materials (H-Replace). Scherer et al. (2018) recommend that hotels increasingly apply bio-based and compostable materials. Klein et al. (2019) and Herbes et al. (2018) suggest the use of bioplastics that are similar in performance to petrochemical polymers. For Koenig-Lewis et al. (2014), harmful plastic does not necessarily have to be banned from hotel premises, as plastic packaging can also be redesigned into reusable variants. Bauske and von Münchhausen (2019) warn against replacing all plastic, because alternative materials are not necessarily more CO2 neutral. Another avoidance measure is to save plastic, for example, using refillable containers (H-Avoid). Rodríguez et al. (2020) therefore call for an in-house repair service in hotels that delays the purchase of new plastic-intensive products. Avoidance is not only based on the search for substitute products, but needs a mix of different measures, according to Semernya et al. (2017). Heidbreder et al. (2019) also include bans on plastic products, as has been the case in the European Union since 2021 for to-go cups, cotton buds, and plastic plates. The corresponding hypotheses H-Replace and H-Avoid are intended to test whether and to what extent holidaymakers see it as the duty of suppliers to take substitute measures or even to ban plastic products, e.g. on beaches. According to the literature, consumers are more likely to accept these measures if their personal attitudes are consistent with them, which falls in the TPB-1 category.

Fig. 1
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Overview of the hypotheses to measure attitudes towards plastic-free holidays and dependencies on personal traits

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Instead of optimising supply management, another measure is that hotels provide more information about their own plastic avoidance philosophies. For Yoon et al. (2021), increasing knowledge amongst decision-makers is generally an effective way to influence their behaviour. Semernya et al. (2017) recommend this especially for waste prevention in maritime regions. Publishing one’s attitude towards plastic consumption has already become an effective marketing tool in everyday business (Heidbreder et al. 2019). And this could also be useful in tourism (Rodríguez et al. 2020). For example, holiday providers could advertise their plastic avoidance efforts on booking platforms (Bauske and von Münchhausen 2019). In addition to such digitalisation strategies, Herrero et al. (2022) also see eco-labels as an effective means of promoting sustainable holidays. Peschel et al. (2016) already demonstrated their positive effect on packaging for food. In contrast, Lazzarini et al. (2018) warn against high expectations because, according to their studies, labels do not always have the desired impact. Just as plastic avoidance is a stricter means than plastic substitution, suppliers can do more than just inform through online booking platforms. According to Magnier and Schoormans (2015), 96% of Europeans expect that active environmental protection should come from companies. Semernya et al. (2017) therefore recommend that holiday providers should establish a regional waste management system at their destination. Bilynets and Cvelbar (2022) even see this as a far more effective sustainability statement by the tourism industry. Whether tourists expect more information to motivate themselves for plastic reduction, or whether they want more avoidance measures from hotel owners, is tested by the H-Inform and H-Manage hypotheses. In the former case, the measures only lead to normative behaviour under TPB-2 if personal attitudes as per TPB-1 already strongly influence everyday behaviour, otherwise the initiative must actually come from providers in order to stimulate the TPB-2 category within the tourist’s decision process.

The Bauske and Münchhausen study (2019), however, also sees holiday guests as having a duty to actively avoid plastic because in the traditional goods market model, they also represent a driving force for structural change. In this regard, Kang and Nicholls (2021) found that 44.3% of surveyed guests revealed higher willingness to pay (WTP) for green lodging facilities. Hao et al. (2019) measured that 78.4% would pay more for products from sustainable companies. A positive correlation between WTP and green hotels, as proven by Kang and Nicholls (2021), was already attributed to a warm-glow effect for bio-based packaging, as researched by Klaiman et al. (2016). Guests could therefore indirectly participate in sustainability measures of the hotels by simply accepting higher prices. For Bauske and von Münchhausen (2019), the implementation of price increases for more environmental commitment is a medium-difficult task. It is harder to actively involve guests in plastic avoidance, e.g. in beach clean-ups. According to Yoon et al. (2021), such desirable behaviour is more likely to occur if a failure to do so leads to feelings of guilt. Semernya et al. (2017) therefore recommend the implementation of incentives for engagement or disincentives for refusal. For Bilynets and Cvelbar (2022), this is only an effective tool if guests already avoid plastic at home more than average. This is because the expectations of a relaxing holiday could stand in the way of such a commitment. Kristanti and Jokom (2017) demonstrated this by analysing the waste separation practices of holidaymakers. Rodríguez et al. (2020), on the other hand, draw a comparatively more positive conclusion, deriving for 86.5% of holiday guests an avoidance behaviour which is similar to what they do at home. Thus, in order for the TPB-3 category to become relevant for the decision-making behaviour of tourists, at best TPB-2 must already be effective, otherwise strong incentives by holiday providers are needed. The hypotheses H-Engage and H-Behave are intended to clarify whether consumers want to participate in plastic avoidance on holiday at all, and how far their commitment would go.

Figure 1 summarises the hypotheses based on the measures of the Bauske and Münchhausen study (2019). In four cases, the initiative can come from hotel companies, in two cases from the guests themselves. Whether and to what extent the approval or rejection of a plastic avoidance measure depends on their personality traits is tested by two further hypotheses H-Attitude and H-Destination.

Results will primarily reveal whether the initiative for plastic avoidance should rather come from the operators and guests passively accept it or whether the impulse comes from the guests and operators only have to offer them tailored possibilities for action. In second place have results managerial relevance because they inform marketing about which product-, price- and communication-policy measures should be customised when offering more sustainable services. Further, it will also reveal which actions should not be taken in order not to upset guests in such an expectation-driven situation as beach holidays. Results also inform whether company procurement should provide specific plastic-free or plastic-substitute products, and company management can find out whether investing in regional environmental projects is effective for demonstrating eco-thinking.

2.2 Plastic avoidance on holiday as a result of personal characteristics

The literature on plastic-free holiday measures also reveals correlations between acceptance and personal traits, but this is not consistently reported. For example, Rodríguez et al. (2020) found the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents to influence their willingness to pay (WTP) for more sustainability at holiday destinations. This was particularly evident amongst older tourists. Klein et al. (2019), on the other hand, could not derive any correlation between WTP and age, gender, and level of education for bioplastic packaging. Yadav et al. (2019) also saw these characteristics as ineffective in choosing green hotels. However, the literature remarkably often reports that especially women consider active waste prevention important (Heidbreder et al. 2019), which Klaiman et al. (2016) again only found for income, age, and household size. Regarding personal attitudes as a psychographic variable, Kristanti and Jokom (2017) consider a higher WTP especially when environmental engagement is personally perceived as stressful. Heidbreder et al. (2019) also assume more engagement amongst consumers when the avoidance situation is seen as usual. This may also be because plastic pollution appears to be a risk to one’s health. The literature is rather heterogeneous regarding the effects of personal characteristics on the consent to plastic-free holiday measures. In addition, the literature research left open whether the distance and the type of holiday destination also influence one’s own opinion. These gaps should therefore be closed by clarifying the hypotheses H-Attitude and H-Destination.

Table 1 summarises the derived hypotheses according to literature. They should first clarify whether effective plastic avoidance in maritime tourism is rather seen as a task of the providers. However, it could also be that consumers maintain their sovereignty especially on holiday and want to determine the avoidance level independently. In this case, those avoidance measures, that are most accepted, are of interest. Furthermore, it should be found out which personal characteristics particularly influence the effectiveness of avoidance strategies. These results also have business relevance, because they show whether the promotion of plastic-free holidays is more effective especially with health-conscious guests or only finds higher acceptance with environmentally minded people. It may also be worth knowing for hotel chains with long-distance facilities whether the acceptance of a plastic-free stay is comparatively lower in overseas regions, which would make investments less effective then.

Table 1 Overview of the hypotheses derived from the literature on plastic-free holidays from a consumer point of view
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3 Method and analysis

3.1 Data collection

The clarification of the hypotheses according to Table 1 was done by means of a survey amongst German consumers. The questionnaire began by presenting a few figures on plastic consumption and environmental impact and proposed a plastic-free holiday as a solution. Similar to Jakovcevic et al. (2014), this was followed by 24 single-item questions with dichotomous response options (agree versus disagree) introducing respective measures (Table 2). Four of these came from each of the categories “Replace”, “Avoid”, “Inform”, “Manage”, “Engage”, and “Behave”. Consent could be expressed by a 7-point scale (Osburg et al. 2016). The items were listed in a random order. At the end, socio-demographic data on Household Size (S1), Employment Status (S2), Age (S3), and Gender (S4) were asked. It also included variables on psychographic characteristics. Of interest was whether holidays were taken with children (V1: Kids’ holiday), where holidays were taken (V2: Region), which environment was preferred (V3: Area), what purpose the holiday served (V4: Purpose), how much was spent for holidays (V5: Holiday costs/year), whether people made holiday always at the same place (V6: Always same place), and whether their own health forced them to restrict themselves at the holiday destination (V7: Health risks). The last item measured the personal degree of avoidance of plastic in everyday life (V8: Skip plastics). The questionnaire was pre-tested for internal consistency through 17 samples and it already achieved a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.90. In October/November 2022, 42 students of tourism management at the iu University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany, surveyed consumers from their own environment, whereby respondents were not allowed to be from the same household. Because each student had to complete at least 12 interviews, the pool of respondents extended beyond their family scope, increasing the randomisation effect. Most students exceeded their quota, interviewing an average of 15 individuals and providing sufficient coverage of all socio-demographic segments. The respondents were informed about the objective and their consent to participate was expressed by their willingness to volunteer information. To check the representativeness of the results, the entries on socio-demographic variables were additionally compared with population data published by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (destatis).

Table 2 Overview of the items and assignment of plastic-free measures derived from the literature
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3.2 Data analysis

The implementation of multiple marketing measures is always associated with high costs for companies. It is therefore more likely that only a few to one of the six instruments listed in Table 1 will be put in practice. It is then interesting to know about their effect strength on typical German consumers. When these are then assigned to the three TPB categories, they indicate whether the avoidance initiative should come from the vacation provider or, if there is sufficient choice, from the tourist. Then, holiday companies can at least develop their own measures within the thematic groups. Therefore, the analysis of individual effects is more in the foreground instead of deriving a forecast model for the entire decision-making process by means of regression analysis.

Data were first analysed descriptively and item-wise through mean values and standard deviations using SPSS software (Aleenajitpong 2013). Results were taken to clarify the hypotheses and to show which specific measures received particularly high levels of approval or disapproval. To find out whether this was due to personality traits, the correlation matrix between all 24 items and the socio- and psychographic variables (S1….S4; V1….V8) was established. In addition to the Pearson correlation r, which was divided into weak, moderate to strong according to Cohen (1988), the multicollinearity by means of VIF value was also of interest, which was 3.45, hence well below 10. Model goodness of fit was assessed for significant correlations (p ≤ 0.05) by RMSEA factor, reaching values between 0.02 and 0.06, hence below the threshold of 0.08. At the same time, the condition 1 ≤ χ2/df ≤ 3 was met. The correlation analysis first served to clarify the hypotheses H-Attitude and H-Destination (Table 1, below).

The descriptive analysis could already show which plastic avoidance measures receive the highest approval. Those with low ratings, on the other hand, would be judged to be of little importance. However, they could also have scored lower because they represent an important criterion in the eyes of the respondents. Therefore, a factor analysis should clarify beyond doubt which items are most meaningful to potential holidaymakers. From the results, the hypotheses H-Replace/Avoid, H-Inform/Manage and H-Behave/Engage (Table 1, above) can first be clarified and concrete measures for marketing derived. If items of the main components also show dependencies on the socio-demographic and psychographic variables according to the correlation matrix, marketing measures could thus be tailored more closely to the target group. Multicollinearity was not present and partial correlations could be excluded as a preliminary test of the principal component analysis with KMO value = 0.94 (> 0.60). The Varimax method was applied and the Kaiser–Guttmann criterion was set with eigenvalue > 1. The component matrix was created after 25 iterations. From the rotated matrix, only those items were assigned to the principal components which loadings were ≥ 0.60.

4 Results

4.1 Data representativeness

A total of 630 consumers were surveyed, and since no answer had to be declared unacceptable, the response rate was 100%, with Cronbach’s Alpha ultimately being 0.92. The representativeness check with the population statistics (Destatis) is summarised in Table 3 (above). As can be seen, more family households tended to be surveyed than singles, which results from a slight predominance of students, hence, younger people. The students thus interviewed more of their peers. This suggests an influence from the parental home in the results and should not be disadvantageous in the sense of the research question.

Table 3 Results on socio-demographic and psychographic variables from 630 respondents. Destatis = Federal Statistical Office
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The personal variables (Table 3, below) show that in 1/3 of the cases holidays sometimes or always take place with children (V1), then mainly in Europe (V2) and on beaches (V3) and in changing destinations (V6), this is mainly for recreation (V4) and is paid with an average of one month’s salary (V5). 92.7% do not have to limit themselves on holiday because of their health (V7), and 2/3 rate their everyday use of plastic as normal (V8). Due to the lack of similar surveys, a comparison with values from official national statistics (Statista) is only roughly possible on the basis of aggregated and mostly past data from thematically comparable surveys. Accordingly, the maxima for V2, V3, and V4 match those of Statista, and the majority of Germans do not spend more than one month’s salary on annual vacation (V5). According to Statista (2023), Germans spend 1175€ per holiday, so the results for V5 suggest that respondents take 1–2 vacations per year. A deviation from the official statistics is shown by V1, according to which the majority of respondents take vacations without children, which matches the dominance of younger people according to S3.

4.2 Descriptive results of items

Table 4 shows the mean ratings \(\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{x}}\) for the respective items, the item group means \(\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}\), and their scatter value (s). At the same time, significant associations with characteristic variables are revealed. As far as concrete measures by the providers are concerned, these tend to lie in product policy. Similarly, offering plastic substitute products (\({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Replace}}\) = 5.1; sReplace = 0.5) or mainly avoiding plastic (\({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Avoid}}\) = 5.1; sAvoid = 0.3) equally received highest acceptance. Hypothesis H-Replace/Avoid is therefore rejected. Women (S4: max. r = 0.15) and older people (S3: max. r = 0.17) saw the highest utility in both measures. It is striking that restrictive policies are less accepted in far-away holiday regions (Avoid8: r = − 0.10) and that the item “Avoid” with seven associations compared to “Replace” with only three significances is triggered by comparatively more personality traits. So, from a marketing perspective, avoidance measures have a higher customization potential and in domestic and continental resorts the serving of dishes for to-go food against a deposit is accepted by a particularly large number of consumer groups (Avoid8).

Table 4 Results of the descriptive analysis of all 24 items and their groupings
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Instead, informing and educating more (\({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Inform}}\) = 4.8; sInform = 1.3) or actively managing environmental measures in the wider region (\({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Manage}}\) = 4.7; sManage = 0.2) was a little less desired company behaviour. Of these, however, providing information passively was a bit more wished, which H-Inform/Manage maintains, although scattering was greater here. Again, women (S4: max. r = 0.12) and older people (S3: max. r = 0.13) are more likely to be the reason for higher ratings.

As far as the commitment to actively participate in plastic avoidance on holiday is concerned, this is nevertheless very low with \({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Engage}}\) = 3.3, and there is great agreement on this sEngage = 0.5. Men (S4: max. r = 0.17) tended to be the refusers here. In contrast, there was consensus to comply with the hotel’s avoidance guidelines (\({\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{X}}}_{\text{Behave}}\)= 5.2; sBehave = 0.2), and this was more likely to be triggered by women (S4: max. r = 0.13) and older people (S3: max. r = 0.17). This confirms H-Behave/Engage.

In a majority of 21 out of 35 correlations, socio-demographic variables are a significant trigger, which rejects hypothesis H-Attitude (Table 1). Regarding H-Destination, of the remaining 35–21 = 14 psychographic variables, only 5 had to do with preferences about the holiday destination and its distance, which also rejects H-Destination and measures could be effective for both beach and mountain regions. Thus, from the descriptive analysis, it can be summarised that consumers are unwilling to engage in active avoidance activities whilst on holiday, but would readily behave in an avoidant manner. Women and older people are more likely to comply with the hotel’s avoidance policy, which overall indicates a higher dependency of plastic-free tourism on socio-demographic characteristics than on attitudinal factors. The result for Engage20 is also interesting, where consumers, who are environmentally conscious in everyday life (V8: r = − 0.11) and overseas tourists (V2: r = − 0.11) were particularly unwilling to participate in plastic avoidance during their stay. The reason could be that holidays are seen here as an exempt from the daily avoidance effort or because pollution problems are far away, but this would still have to be confirmed by follow-up research.

4.3 Prioritisation of avoidance measures from consumer’s point of view

The previous descriptive analyses already showed numerous dependencies between attitudes towards plastic avoidance measures and personality traits. For the use of expensive marketing efforts for plastic-free holiday offers, a focus on a few but effective actions makes more sense. The factor analysis, which reduces the 24 items, is used for this purpose and the results are shown in Table 5. The principal components contain relevant items with particularly high loading strengths. An interpretation of the factors should finally answer the key question whether the initiative for plastic avoidance should rather come from the consumers or the suppliers. In the former case, according to Sect. 2, relevant items are more likely to be assigned to the TPB-1 category, which then means that plastic avoidance by holidaymakers themselves requires a strong personal conviction. If it is rather the suppliers who are in charge, items “Inform/Manage” to TPB-2 and especially “Engage/Behave” to TPB-3 become relevant.

Table 5 Results from factor analysis, extracted principal components and contained items with loading > 0.60
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As can be seen, the first factor Π1 explains almost 36% of the variance. Here, mainly the items from the category “Manage” are included, i.e. measures taken by the holiday providers. According to Table 2, guests expect local operators to actively engage in nature conservation projects to compensate for the damage caused by plastic-intensive hotel businesses and their guests, e.g. on beaches. Specifically, the item “Manage14”, which requires hotels to implement local waste recycling concepts, and item “Manage16”, which demands sustainability certification for this, appear to be the most effective. Both have the highest ratings (Table 4: \(\stackrel{\mathrm{-}}{\text{x}}\) = 4.9 and 4.8) and mainly by women (S4: r = 0.10). Together with the two relevant items “Replace1” and “Replace2”, the first principal component indicates that hotel guests want to limit themselves less in their plastic use during their stay. Rather, they prefer to continue consuming and that damage is compensated in other ways. Even though “Avoid” received higher approval ratings according to Table 4, “Manage” becomes the more effective marketing tool, but should now be used in a customised way since it is rather connected to socio-demographic traits. This also shows that the normative environment established by holiday operators is most triggering for desired behaviour, which makes TPB-2 the dominating category.

The remaining components Π2, Π3, and Π4 concern the TPB-3 category mainly. Since items contained herein account for almost 17% of the variance, they are also significant for holidaymakers. This does not mean that all actions described in Table 2 (below) should be taken here, as to actively engage guests in plastic avoidance, e.g. beach clean-ups, was rejected due to low ratings. According to this, excessively binding holidaymakers into plastic avoidance measures can also lead to rejection. Therefore, marketing strategies should be chosen in accordance with the consent levels, after which measures as per items Behave21/22/24 in Table 2 are a good choice because they received higher agreement than the items in Π2. Although Π2 loads more, it just simply expresses that tourists can react very adversely here. Therefore, it is better to integrate items from Π3 and Π4 in marketing. The obligation from Π4 that drinking bottles at the beach should only be refilled with water from dispensers in the hotel (Behave21) is with 4.63% share of variance obviously as effective as the two measures Behave22 and Behave24 with 5.02% from Π3. Fewer measures can therefore be at least as good as implementing many of them. Overall, however, the result shows that plastic prevention alone becomes effective when the initiative comes from the operators and they need to create a normative environment that allows the efforts to be considered “normal”, as TPB-2 and TPB-3 are relevant categories. Table 6 provides an overview of the hypothesis testing and summarises the findings.

Table 6 Overview of results from hypothesis testing
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5 Discussion

This study aims to review the previous expert study by Bauske and von Münchhausen (2019) from a consumer perspective. Holidaymakers are obviously not prepared to accept all plastic avoidance measures. What is new here is that people do not like to sacrifice their holiday pleasures for avoiding plastic pollution. Rather, people want to continue to consume plastic products and active damage avoidance or remediation should be carried out by the hotel facilities. This agrees with Magnier and Schoormans (2015), according to which 95% of Europeans believe that responsibility should be in the hands of companies. If substitution measures for plastic are nevertheless taken, they enjoy a high level of approval from guests despite higher prices. But then they should not restrict the stay. Thus, the responsibility to act is on the provider side and they should also prove this through certification. For this case, Feucht and Zander (2018) derived a significantly higher willingness to pay amongst consumers, which could now also be expected in the tourism industry. As this study suggests, bans on plastic products, as proposed by Heidbreder et al. (2019), would not be accepted by hotel guests. More effective are information-guided behavioural instructions, which Semernya et al. (2017) deduce from their research.

The survey also gave insights into the target group-specific design of marketing measures. Figure 2 illustrates this with bubbles for the four abstracted principal components Π. Their diameter depicts the degree of personalisation of the marketing policy, as the ratio of the number of significant correlations (Table 4) to Π-specific items (Table 5). As can be seen, the supplier-relevant component Π1 accounts for the maximum variance with 7 items and is therefore the most meaningful. However, it also shows the least dependencies on personality traits of potential holidaymakers. Selected measures should therefore be equally motivating for all persons, which would still be given when only concentrating on “S4: Gender”. In contrast, the lesser meaningful but more consumer-relevant component Π3 has a high degree of personalisation, as both contained items are associated with 6 personality traits. This agrees with Rodríguez et al. (2020) that consent to plastic prevention activities is fundamentally dependent on socio-demographic variables and in particular, it is women and older people who respond comparatively more openly. At the same time, it could not confirm their assumptions that home-like waste prevention behaviour is found on holiday as well. Because V8 on “Skip plastics” was associated with only one item, namely “Engage20” on voluntarily renouncing of paid hotel stays. And the effect was even negative, i.e. with active avoidance in everyday life, one does not want to have to do this on holiday as well.

Fig. 2
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Degree of customisation (bubble size) for the derived plastic avoidance policy Π

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As a completely new finding, the study brought to light that health concerns are a too weak trigger to be used effectively in marketing, because it was only associated with two items (Table 4: Replace4; Manage14). In comparison, the study suggests that the understanding of plastic avoidance measures tends to decrease with growing distance of the holiday destination, i.e. higher prices for plastic avoidance are then possibly less appreciated. And it also seems that behaviour-guiding plastic avoidance measures are more effective for family holidays with children, because here “V1: Kids’ holiday” was associated with at least two “Behave”-items.

6 Conclusion

This study investigated whether and to what extent plastic avoidance measures derived by tourism experts are also accepted by consumers and which of them could be used particularly effectively in marketing, e.g. for plastic-free beach holiday. The following conclusions and recommendations for action could be derived:

  1. (1)

    Most Germans spend holidays abroad and at the seaside for recreation, usually spending a month’s salary per year. A third have children with them and the same amount consider themselves to be above average in terms of environmental awareness when dealing with plastics.

  2. (2)

    In general, if consumers already limit their plastic consumption in everyday life, they are less likely to want to have to do so during vacation as well. Suppliers should therefore not rely on guests’ own initiative and must therefore take action themselves.

  3. (3)

    Holidays on the coast, in the mountains, in cities, or in the countryside make little difference to the consent to plastic avoidance measures there. However, the acceptance decreases with the distance to the vacation destination, which makes German plastic-free vacation offers maximally effective within Europe.

  4. (4)

    A small number of individual measures can be equally effective as many measures. But not all policies are equally accepted by private decision-makers. In particular, tourists should not be encouraged to renounce some of their vacation activities, nor should they be obliged to actively participate in environmental measures such as beach clean-ups, unless the situational circumstances make these actions seem “normal”.

  5. (5)

    Guests prefer it if the suppliers themselves are actively engaged locally, such as recycling concepts or nature conservation projects. Domestic and local public authorities should create and offer certification systems for this purpose. Operators can then differentiate themselves through certificates and higher willingness to pay is to be expected from tourists.

  6. (6)

    When choosing between substitute products and plastic avoidance measures, both are rated equally. So measures, such as deposits on plastic takeaway products or refilling plastic bottles at the hotel, are more acceptable. This is even more appreciated when vacationing with children.

  7. (7)

    Marketing for plastic-free vacations targeted at women and older people has greater effect, as this increases consent for most avoidance measures.

  8. (8)

    Proclaiming plastic-free holiday as a healthier option for maritime vacation is not a promising approach. In contrast, the environmental idea seems to motivate more. This can be deduced from the fact that the further away the vacation destination is, the more this attitude weakens. For this reason, this marketing instrument could become particularly ineffective for overseas vacations.

This study also has limitations. On the one hand, respondents were only placed in a hypothetical decision-making situation (Koutsimanis et al. 2012). On the other hand, they were limited to Germany, which makes the results representative at least for the Central European region. But the study also provided insights on how to continue research in this field. In particular, there is a need to investigate the negative correlations revealed between the plastic-free vacation attitude and daily plastic use, as well as the distance to the holiday destination (Table 4). Independently of this, further studies should clarify how much a higher willingness to pay for plastic-free beach vacation may actually be, in order to be able to budget more concretely for marketing measures.