Running a greener race: willingness–to–pay evidence from the Old Mutual Two Oceans marathon in South Africa

Abstract

Environmentally and socially responsible leisure activity has become a key issue in tourism development. Service providers are keen to promote their environmental sustainability credentials and people are starting to pay for carbon offsets and “green” certified facilities. However, compared to doing business as usual, greener operations often imply large capital investments and higher operating costs. There are numerous studies on the importance of environmentally sustainable tourism, on tourists who indicate that environmental sustainability is important to them and on the positive impacts that it may have on development. This paper aims to make a contribution to the literature on whether people are willing to pay for greener products and services, by extending the scope to the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa in 2011 where a survey was conducted. The focus was on the characteristics of the runners who were willing to pay for a sustainable event and the results show that there were differences between the willingness to pay of different groupings of runners. Participants who were older and those who were self-employed were more likely to be greener. Education levels do not seem to matter, but feeling responsible for climate change does