Moral Intensity in Tourism Marketing Decisions: a proposed scale of measurement

Abstract

Tourism activities are gaining emphasis in recent decades to be an activity that has contributed to the social and economic development in many regions. Such activity hasimportance, as the decision making of a manager can generate benefits or harms on thesociety in which tourism is inserted. Thus, this paper presents as objective the development of a scale for measuring the construct moral intensity considering the context of ethical decision making of the managers in tourism. The literature review indicated that the moral intensityconstruct didn’t have a validated scale for this context. The moral intensity construct was proposed by Jones (1991) that was based on the analysis of moral topic in itself, consideringthat each individual will react differently at various intensities in the face of ethical situations. This author considers that the moral intensity construct is composed of sixcharacteristics: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporalimmediacy, proximity and concentration of effect. Based in this considerations this study presents the development of three scenarios based in different contexts (social, economic andenvironmental) associated with ethical dilemmas of tourism and six items about the sixcharacteristics of moral intensity. For the development and validation of the scale we usedthree samples, with two students and one with managers. The empirical tests indicate theconsistency of the items and scenarios developed, with variations in perceptions according tothe types of scenarios. In addition ideas are proposed at the end of the scales of applications and future research.