Hey, flyertalk!

I am a Master student at Erasmus University Rotterdam, doing a thesis project on sustainable business practices of airlines and how effective do they communicate about sustainability/CSR with customers.

If you travel occasionally or frequently by air, please take time to complete this survey, it will take 8-12 minutes of your time!

In return, you will have 2 chances to win 50 euros in any form that will be suitable for the winner! Not only you have a chance to win money, but to participate in the unique research project in the area which has never been explored from such angle before.

I would greatly appreciate your time to help me (I need around 200 respondents).

I will also post results of the analysis, once it is finished!

Survey link one more time.

What a tough job. The airlines have proven the hypothesis false (effective is not good word for them).

It was a long survey.

Thank you for taking time and filling it in! During a pre-test it took 8-12 minutes to fill it in.

I agree, true! However, that is why I am so interested in this study, what other people say/think.

OK, I am hooked- will do it shortly.

Thank you beforehand! Looking forward to your response and I am willing to discuss this topic there further as well. I expected that I would find people who had similar thoughts about it, now I wonder how many people actually think that way/or what do they think.

bug in survey - " Airlines can engage in CSR in various ways. Please select all statements that appeal to you." didn't have a none of the above option, I was forced to choose something, which now has corrupted the faithfulness if this survey

Thank you, good point, fixed it now!

I actually didn't make it all the way through, but I would use "repetitive" to describe it. I suppose this isn't such a bad thing insofar as scientific methodology is concerned. However, it didn't take me long to determine that the airlines I fly most often don't really care about social responsibility nor do they need to because they have a captive audience.

Thank you for your comments! Yes, I completely understand why you might determine it so quickly, however, that is exactly why I did this survey: on the one hand, more and more airlines engage in social responsibility, but on the other hand, they fail to address their responsibilities. But in the eyes of consumers do they really have to engage in it and "be responsible"? Or the only thing that matters when it comes from travelling from point A to point B is safety/price of the ticket?

To/from Shanghai, price differences tend to be negligible between airlines, loyalty is hardly worth any effort at all, and nobody is going to tell you "mu is awesome" or "that 720a flight (which sat on the tarmac for 3 hours) was a wonderful experience".

Would it be cool if mu was nice to its employees or cared about the environment? Sure, but it honestly doesn't matter in cases where I have no choice (mu, FM, and ho might as well be one airline).

Yeah, that is true, but the question is if people need information about what airlines do beyond what is required of them and if they do, will it influence their choice if they have one. Will you try to avoid airlines if you know that they are running shady business practices? For example, bad employee treatment can reflect on flight safety or employee strike may happen and your flight someday can be unexpectedly delayed because of that.

Decades of behavior by airline consumers pretty much points to price being the primary factor in purchase decisions. All other factors are great- as long as they don't have to pay extra for it.

Thank you for your comment, Indeed I agree with you, I personally really care about the price more than about anything else. Well, actually, about the price/the service for this price, but sometimes the price alone can be a decisive factor. However, some passengers really care about how airlines treat their employees (I don't know, maybe they care only because it can influence the schedule, but however), or that they will contribute to recycling etc. That is what this research is for, partially.
I heard people saying that they even started thinking about recycling after their air travel with one of the European airlines and they would definitely fly with them again. I wonder whether it was just because of recycling though