Abstract
Sustainability transitions involve a dynamic interaction of regulation, innovation, and preferences for new products. In this study we examine consumer preferences as a potential driver of supply side innovations in the winter tourism industry. We use a novel survey approach that allows for heuristic decision-making based on information from third parties. Specifically, we investigate consumer preferences when (i) only factual information and (ii) factual informationand environmental NGO or consumer recommendations are available. The third-party information significantly affected the destination choices in about one third of the examined choice sets. The results indicate a willingness to pay for some of the examined sustainability attributes, and they point to specific differences among different tourist groups. Regarding methodology we suggest that survey experiments involving third-party information are useful for the study of choices about product or policy innovations in dynamic markets where standard assumptions on preferences and rationality may not apply.
