How to be a better traveller in the age of social media and influencer-driven tourism

Travel is back in full swing this summer, and so is bad behaviour by tourists.

Popular destinations have seen an uptick in incidents involving tourists in recent years. Reports of a man defacing the Colosseum in Rome shows that behaviour has deteriorated even in places that rarely had problems in the past.

What’s behind these abhorrent acts? One answer, my research shows, is social media. Instagram and TikTok have made it easy to find “hidden gem” restaurants and discover new destinations to add to your bucket list. But this democratisation of travel has had other consequences.

Because people now see their social media connections from their home environment travelling in an exotic location, they assume (consciously or not) that behaviour they ordinarily carry out at home is also acceptable in that holiday destination.

This is known as social proof, when we look to the behaviours of others to inform our own actions. People are likely to act more hedonistically while on holiday. Now, travellers also look to social media for proof of how others behave. If their peers from home are throwing caution to the wind while on holiday, this can cause a domino effect of bad behaviour.

I’ve identified other bad travel attitudes and habits that have emerged as a result of social media-driven tourism.

For example, the identifiable victim effect, which...

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