Is the cruise enterprise giant also a giant of social responsibility for sustainable development？

Abstract

The rapid development of cruise tourism, while promoting economic development, has negative effects that cannot be ignored. Cruise lines, as the main body of cruise tourism operations, have the responsibility to make substantial efforts to reduce the negative effects they generate. In this paper, we will construct a cruise industry CSR evaluation index system, and use content analysis and hierarchical analysis to analyze and evaluate the CSR performance of the two major cruise groups that account for 70% of global capacity: Carnival Cruise Group and Royal Caribbean Cruise Group. The study found that: although the CSR fulfillment of cruise companies has improved in recent years, the scores of Carnival and Royal in 2017 were 0.75 and 0.68, respectively, and the disclosure of indicators was only 83% and 65% of the requirements of the guidelines. Moreover, the CSR scores and indicator disclosures of cruise companies are uneven across dimensions, with low social and environmental scores, and disclosure indicators are mostly management indicators, while both measure effects and negative information data are ignored. This indicates that the cruise industry is in the initial stage of CSR management, and cruise line enterprises still lack the attention and initiative to take responsibility for the social and environmental impact responsibilities of cruise tourism.