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The chapter focuses on responsible tourism as a form of ethical consumption, based on conscious travel choices and behavior. There is a growing demand for responsible tourism, although it seems to be characterized by some inconsistencies, both between tourists' intention and concrete behavior and between these behaviors and the official definitions promoted by the industry and institutions. Starting from the analysis of a recent survey about responsible tourism on the Italian market, the chapter then tries to investigate and explain these gaps, by applying the perspective of social studies and of researches on consumer tribes and new consumers' communities. The findings of the survey discussed in the chapter seem to confirm that consumers have their own perception of responsible tourism and that the meaning is discursively constructed within and outside responsible tourists' communities. Therefore, the intention-behavior gap and the difference between tourists' account of responsible tourism and “institutional” definitions cannot be categorized as true inconsistencies. |
