Eficiência energética em meios de hospedagem : crenças e práticas

Abstract

The growth of tourism generates both positive and negative impacts. On one hand there are new socio-economical alternatives for local communities, regions and countries opening new job opportunities, new income sources and development. On the other hand, tourism still is a privilege of elites and contributes for the environmental degradation, causing high energy consumption, especially from the non renewable energy sources. The maximization of the positive impacts and the minimization of the negative ones depend on the human being, their beliefs and attitude and mainly their actions. Nothing will change if the belief, attitude and practices of the people who manage and practice tourism do not change. People frequently adopt a politically correct discourse towards environmental issues. They talk about their beliefs, about the need of rationalizing energy resources to avoid depleting the generating sources, to decrease the carbon emissions and to avoid global warming. Yet the practices do not always reflect those beliefs, attitude and the discourse. This study focuses on the rational use of energy in hosting facilities and intends to check whether the beliefs and attitude, the verbalizations and the practices of the hosting facilities managers on the North Coast of Rio Grande do Sul, concerning the rational consumption of energy are coherent. The subjects were the managers of hosting facilities in Arroio do Sal (RS), and the criteria for the rational use of energy were established according to the Norm NBR 15401: 2006 – Hosting Facilities – Sustainability Managing System – Requirements. The research is predominantly qualitative, of exploratory approach and used interviews and observation techniques. The instruments to collect the data – a questionnaire on attitudes (beliefs and feelings), an interview script and an observation chart of the practices were taken from the item 5.6 from NBR 15401: 2006 and its sub-items. The results showed evidence that the beliefs and attitude and the pratices carried out by the managers of hosting facilities are not always coherent. The attitudes predispose the subjects, but they are not determinant for the practices. However, we can consider that there are already favorable information and beliefs towards the rational use of energy that there have been improvements as well. In summary, incentive policies, legislation, rewards, technical assistance, loans with reasonable interest and national programs focusing on the efficient use of energy in the touristic enterprises are fundamental to make the hosting facilities use energy efficiently.