Sexual Harassment During Tourism and Cruise Internships: Exploring Situational Factors, Causes, and Their Implications

Abstract

The goal of this study is to determine the factors influencing students' perception of sexual harassment during their tourism and/or cruise internship. Particular focus was placed on the role of organizational culture and work environment, as well on the effectiveness of anti-harassment company policies. For this purpose, a self-administered survey was distributed online, yielding 135 completed questionnaires. The analysis results underlined aspects of organizational culture/work environment as a reliable predictor of sexual harassment occurrences. More specifically, the degree of direct customer contact and the fluidity between private and public space, both foster sexual harassment occurrences. In this context, the particularities of the work environment and conditions on board cruise ships would be expected to result to relatively higher frequencies of sexual harassment incidents. Indeed, compared to the rest of the sample, the cruise interns reported higher frequencies of sexual harassment and were also less likely to receive support from their employers. Despite the small sample size, the study produced statistically significant results for tourism internships in general. Yet, the small proportion of cruise interns in the sample only allowed a nonrepresentative comparison (i.e., descriptive comparison of sample means). Nonetheless, our preliminary findings encourage a more in-depth investigation in the cruise domain, underlining the relevance of this research note.