On 27 January 2026, MONA hosted its fourth capacity-building webinar, bringing together experts from across Europe to examine how behaviour-change strategies and campaigns can encourage more sustainable travel to and within nature areas.
Transport remains one of the most significant contributors to tourism's environmental impact, accounting for a substantial share of carbon emissions. Whilst many tourists express concern about sustainability, their actual travel choices often tell a different story. On vacation, convenience typically takes priority over environmental considerations, with visitors behaving quite differently than they might in their daily lives. The webinar explored how targeted campaigns and behavioural insights can help bridge this gap between intention and action.
Breaking the habit: sustainable visitor behaviour towards nature areas
Paul van de Coevering, from Breda University of Applied Sciences, opened the session by examining how insights from behavioural science can encourage more sustainable visitor behaviour in nature areas. He explained that most everyday decisions are made automatically with little conscious effort, which limits the effectiveness of information-based campaigns alone.
Drawing on dual-process thinking and established behavioural models, van de Coevering showed how the physical and social environment can be designed to guide choices through nudges, social norms and well-designed defaults. He emphasised the importance of making sustainable options the easiest and most attractive choice in terms of cost, time and experience. Meaningful behaviour change, he argued, is achieved by combining changes to decision environments, habits and identity, so that sustainable behaviour aligns naturally with how people think, act and see themselves as visitors to nature areas.
Mobility Management tools to develop sustainable tourism mobility in protected natural areas
Marie Couvrat-Desvergnes from CEREMA in France shared practical experience of using mobility management tools to support sustainable tourism access to protected natural areas. She introduced mobility management as a combination of infrastructure, services, information, incentives and behavioural measures designed to reduce car dependency and encourage alternative travel choices.
Through concrete examples from the Aubrac Regional Natural Park, Couvrat-Desvergnes demonstrated how integrated actions, like improved rail access, combined mobility offers, visitor information, branding and on-site services, can reshape how tourists reach and move within sensitive landscapes. She highlighted the importance of working with both visitors and local stakeholders, using phased experimentation, co-design and communication to support behaviour change over time. Her presentation showed that sustainable tourism mobility relies on coordinated planning, targeted communication and long-term institutional collaboration, rather than isolated transport measures alone.
Sustainable travel in Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park
Emily Davie from Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park described efforts to transform transport in a landscape where a small resident population experiences very high visitor numbers and car-based travel dominates. She linked sustainable transport directly to net zero goals, social inclusion, rural economic resilience and the management of visitor pressures.
Davie outlined a vision for an inclusive, low-carbon transport network built around gateways and hubs, improved public transport and active travel, demand management, and strong marketing and communications. Central to the approach is a new strategic mobility partnership that brings together local, regional and national stakeholders to coordinate planning, data, funding and delivery.
Practical pilot initiatives, such as the National Park Journey Planner and the Trossachs Explorer bus service, demonstrate how integrated ticketing, targeted services and high-quality user experience can increase confidence in public transport and enable car-free access to rural destinations. Davie emphasised the need for long-term governance and funding reform to support a shift towards sustainable travel, whilst showing how national parks can act as testbeds for innovation in rural mobility.
Buitenpoorten - Off the Platform, onto the Paths!
Patricia Kleijn, Public Affairs Manager at Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), introduced the "Green Gateways" (Buitenpoorten) concept, which positions public transport stations as attractive starting points for accessing nearby nature and recreation areas. As a MONA subproject, it focuses on encouraging behavioural change by making public transport the natural choice for visiting vulnerable natural landscapes, whilst also helping to spread visitor pressure more evenly.
The approach combines careful station selection within walking distance of nature, improvements to the station environment to create a sense of arrival in nature, and targeted marketing in which each gateway has its own identity linked to local landscape features. Developed in partnership with NPUH and local authorities, the initiative aims to strengthen links between public transport and shared mobility, raise the visibility of sustainable travel options, and establish stations as recognisable, low-carbon entry points to nature.
You can find the presentations and recording here:
Breaking the habit: sustainable visitor behaviour towards nature areas Paul van de Coevering, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
Mobility Management tools to develop sustainable tourism mobility in protected natural areas Marie Couvrat-Desvergnes, CEREMA, France
Sustainable Travel in Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Emily Davie, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, Scotland
Buitenpoorten - Off the Platform, onto the Paths! Patricia Kleijn, Public Affairs Manager NS, Netherlands