NS34 Session 5

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Title: Ethical and responsible tourism in a changing world: Agency, accountability and limits

Organisers: Siamak Seyfi and Michael Hall

Affiliation: University of Oulu, Massey University

Description

Tourism is increasingly framed as a potential agent for positive change in response to climate change, social inequality, geopolitical tensions, and environmental degradation. Concepts such as ethical tourism, responsible tourism, and sustainability now feature prominently in academic debates, policy agendas, and practice-oriented discussions. At the same time, critical scholarship questions the extent to which these ideas deliver meaningful change, particularly when responsibility is shifted toward individuals, travellers, or local communities without sufficient attention to power relations, governance structures, and material constraints. This session invites contributions that critically examine ethical and responsible tourism in a changing world. It asks how responsibility is defined, distributed, and negotiated across tourism systems, and how tourism actors operate as moral agents within unequal social, economic, and political contexts.

Rather than treating ethics as a matter of individual choice alone, the session encourages engagement with the structural and institutional conditions that shape ethical claims and practices.

The session welcomes conceptual and empirical papers that address questions such as: Who defines responsibility in tourism, and who gains from that definition? How do ethical tourism initiatives reproduce or challenge existing inequalities? How are local communities positioned within responsible tourism agendas? To what extent do geopolitical and economic constraints limit ethical practice? What are the structural limits of tourism as a vehicle for climate and social justice? How do digital platforms, public discourse, and governance arrangements influence ethical expectations and accountability in tourism?. Papers may also explore refusal, critique, and resistance alongside reform-oriented approaches.

We welcome contributions that connect ethical and responsible tourism to broader debates on sustainability, justice, wellbeing, political expression, and governance. Submissions may focus on tourists, destinations, communities, workers, institutions, or policy processes. Comparative and critical perspectives are encouraged, as are papers that question dominant narratives and highlight contradictions in ethical and responsible tourism practices.