Developing ethical consumer personas for the tourism industry: A means-end approach

This paper introduces a method to develop ethical consumer personas for the tourism industry based on personal values as a motivational construct influencing consumer decisions in tourism. These personas, i.e. archetypes of ethical consumers, advance previously developed shades of ethical tourists ranging from soft to hard, more or less committed (e.g. Swarbrooke and Horner 2007) differing in their interest and actual ethical behaviours. The interest in consumer personas surfaces in reports on consumer goods companies (Janke, 2019) or the Slowenian Tourism Board (2016) who work with their own developed consumer personas and personas discussed in the literature on design thinking (Uebernickel et al 2015).