KOREASCHOLAR

Ethical consumption, including ethical tourist behavior, is of growing importance to governments, companies and consumers and consumers increasingly act accordingly (Sheth, Sethia, & Srinivas, 2010). Most ethical tourist behaviors conform to service industry characteristics, being intangible, heterogeneous and fusing production and consumption. Adopting ethical tourist behaviors (ETBs) requires activities, practices or ideas that consumers perceive as new, components that are key characteristics of innovations (Goldsmith, d’Hauteville, & Flynn, 1998; Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971). Studies frequently explore environmentally friendly behavior of a specific tourist segment - existing eco-tourists (Dolnicar, Laesser, & Matus, 2010) and limit their focus to environmental issues. In line with the World Tourism Organization’s conceptualization that highlights the importance of environmental, cultural and sociological aspects (http://ethics.unwto.org/en/content/global-code-ethics-tourism), this research uses the term ethical tourist behavior and investigates the concept using a sample of ordinary tourists. Consumer innovativeness has been defined as the “degree to which an individual is relatively earlier in adopting an innovation than other members of his system” (Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971, p. 27). Innovativeness, the propensity to adopt, is focusing on an individual’s behavior relative to other people in a population (Goldsmith & Hofacker, 1991; Im, Bayus, & Mason, 2003). Diffusion of innovation, investigating the spread of an innovation through the population, is frequently modeled using an S-curve (Rogers, 1995). ETB includes a wide range of activities with the behavior expected to be cumulative; for example somebody who chooses to stay in tourist accommodations with environmental certification is also likely to recycle. Cumulative patterns fit the Rasch Model (RM) (Rasch 1960/80). Well established in education and psychology, the model gains increasing attention in marketing (for example Ewing, Salzberger, & Sinkovics, 2005; Ganglmair-Wooliscroft & Wooliscroft, 2013; Salzberger & Koller, 2013; Wooliscroft, Ganglmair-Wooliscroft, & Noone, 2014). The probabilistic RM is based on a mathematically elegant equation (Bond & Fox, 2007), specifying that people who undertake more extreme ethical tourist behavior will also have a higher probability of engaging in (and subsequently agreeing to or endorsing a) comparably easier ethical tourist behavior. Item Characteristic Curves (Bond & Fox, 2007) embody the theoretical curve for an item’s endorsability. If empirical answer patterns follow the theoretical curve (and a number of other fit statistics are satisfactory) the item fits requirements of the Rasch Model. This study develops an ETB hierarchy and explores parallels between characteristics of Rasch Modelling (Rasch, 1960/80) and the Adoption of Innovation (Rogers, 1995). Additionally, the study explores variables influencing the level of ETB, representing actualized ethical tourist innovativeness. The final ETB hierarchy contains of 27 ethical tourist behaviors that relate to a wide range of holidays. Using a cross-sectional sample of 322 respondents, representative of the population, the research finds that ethical tourist behavior diffuses through the population in a structured, ordered sequence, providing support for parallels between the Diffusion of Innovation Model (Rogers, 1995) and Rasch Model’s ICC characteristics. Most respondents undertake only a small range of ethical tourist behaviors, indicating that many ethical issues are at a very early stage of the diffusion process. The level of ethical tourist behavior adaption – operationalized through respondent’s position on the ETB hierarchy is influenced by high importance of universalism, age and gender.

• Alexandra Ganglmair-Wooliscroft(University of Otago)
• Ben Wooliscroft(University of Otago)