ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the ethical issues of consumer behaviour, and frames them in relation to one of the key challenges of travel and tourism of our current times: that travel causes both positive and negative impacts. It reviews ethical theory, defining ethical consumption and ethical consumerism and outlining the nature of the ethical business and the ethical consumer. The chapter discusses the role of society's different actors in ethically responsible behaviour and outlines reasons for co-operative systems failing to meet a shared responsibility. It provides an overview of ethical tourism and the ethical tourist and determines the barriers to change which impede responsible consumer behaviour. The chapter also reviews the role of cognitive dissonance, moral disengagement and diffusion of responsibility. It considers the impact that travel can have upon a tourist destination that is under threat of disappearing through climate change, aggravated through tourism.
