Ethical behaviour on holiday and at home: combining behaviour in two contexts

Abstract

ABSTRACTEthical consumption behaviour, on holiday and at home, is required to minimize future environmental and social damage. Ethical consumption is a prominent issue in the media and in academic research, but ethical behaviours remain limited among the general population. This research explores whether an underlying propensity to act ethically can be extended to behaviour across two life contexts, Ethical Tourist Behaviour (ETB) and Everyday Ethical Consumption Behaviour (ECB). We also examine whether ethical behaviour decreases on holiday as suggested by previous research. Using the Rasch Model, ethical behaviour on holiday and at home is combined into one ETB/ECB continuum and ethical behaviours in both life contexts are directly compared. In line with other research, our subjects undertake only a limited number of ethical behaviours, on holiday and at home. We find that tourists engage in ethical behaviours, but spill-over of ethical behaviour across the two contexts only occurs between situationally/environmentally similar behaviours, ethical behaviours whose underlying barriers are of similar difficulty in both life contexts. These results and this methodology can be used by tourism managers and policy-makers to explore current ethical behaviour and offer the next ethical steps to citizens.