Determinants of traveler intention toward animal ethics in tourism: Developing a causal recipe combining cognition, affect, and norm factors

Abstract

This study investigates the factors that influence travelers' intentions toward animal ethics in tourism, utilizing innovative statistical techniques, namely GSCAM, necessary condition analysis (NCA), and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA). Through a stringent methodological approach, we tested the structural model, examined necessary and sufficient conditions, and elaborated on potential configurations resulting from the complex interactions of cognitive, affective, and normative antecedents that influence a traveler's intention to support animal ethics in tourism. In doing so, the study contributes novel insights by identifying four types of predictors: 1) necessary and sufficient, 2) necessary but insufficient, 3) unnecessary but sufficient, and 4) unnecessary and insufficient variables. Our results demonstrate that emotional involvement (EI) and moral norms (MN) significantly affect intention toward animal ethics in tourism (INT). Ethical concern (EC) is necessary but not sufficient to induce INT, while MN is both necessary and sufficient for INT.