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Tourists experience conflicts and dilemmas in relation to sustainable travelling, and studies on sustainable tourism have focused on dichotomies such as knowledge/value-action gaps to explain discrepancies between intentions and actions taken to travel more sustainably. This paper contributes to this field of research through interviews with young adult travellers – explored through a sample of university students - and demonstrates how multiple coping practices are utilised to handle and legitimize (un)sustainable travelling. We highlight the under-researched significance of social communities in shaping the ways in which young adults think, talk and practice sustainable travelling. We theorise upon the relationships between coping practices and parents, peers and partners and suggest a new sustainable travel coping framework to help advance our understanding of sustainable travelling practices among young adults.
Therkelsen et al. (2026) studied this question.