Flight Shame : Shame as a Tool to Change Consumer Behavior

Abstract

In 2018, an environmental movement called Flight shame has started to spread around the world with Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish climate activist as its head figure. In Sweden the air passenger numbers have started to fall, and this is likely due to Flight shame. In this thesis shame is studied from the point of view of consumption, particularly in air travel, in order to find out how shame affects people’s consumption decisions and whether shaming is an effective way to get people change their consumption behavior. The purpose of the thesis is to discover whether the feeling of shame is stronger than desire to travel and fly.

The research was carried out by using an online survey which was to give an understanding of how the people in Finland perceive Flight shame and its effectiveness. The results are based on 74 answers of young adults.

It is clear that in Finland people are worried about climate change and do recognize the climate impact of air travel. Many people see the need to reduce flying in general and are at least considering that air travel might be something that one should be ashamed of. Still, most have not experienced shame for their flying and those who have, show signs that the shame arises often elsewhere than other’s effort to make one feel ashamed. Despite air travel being perceived shameful, people are still highly willing to justify their own air travel, which suggest that there is a battle between what is morally right and what one desires, reluctance to shift to a new slowly emerging social norm.