Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in tourism, with its central evironmental dimension, represents an important component for the sustainable growth of the tourism industry. The related CSR education could prove a major factor for future professional performance in this field of activity. Thus, this article is aimed at identifying the perceptions of current business students about CSR (students from study programs dedicated to business administration in tourism) and the importance they attribute to CSR environmental practices, mainly from their perspective as future employees in the tourism industry. We elaborated a research methodology based on the Ecolabelling principles, designed by the European Union in 2009. Our findings revealed that business tourism students assign more importance to several specific CSR environmental practices and that the importance of these CSR practices is statistically significant (we determined this significance by using the Friedman, Paired-Samples t-, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and Bartlett sphericity statistical tests). The elaborated research methodology proved to be statistically highly reliable. Results also show the differences regarding the CSR practices preferred by various categories of students according to their study levels and gender. Our results pointed out that our third-year bachelor students showed a higher interest in CSR practices related to their professional training, while students from the master level degree attached more importance to CSR practices related to the environment. We also confirmed conclusions of previous studies that female respondents attach more importance to environmental issues than male respondents. Thus, we can state that a higher level of education is a key factor that supports CSR development in practice. Also, a significant conclusion of our research is related to the academic curricula for business faculties which must incorporate solid CSR and business ethics-dedicated courses and offer the needed support for the development of thematic projects about CSR Environmental practices in hotels。
1 July 2021 in The Annals of the University of Oradea. Economic Sciences
Nowadays, tourism plays an essential role in economic growth and development in many countries. Tourists have different travelling motivations and behavioural manifestations, helping tour operators decide suitable for them. Developing a dark tourism niche concept is a necessary step for correct use of it in theory and practice. Dark tourism is an important concept studied in the past twenty years in worldwide literature. This empirical paper aimed to determine the tourists’ motivations for travelling to Romania’s dark tourism destinations and establishing them. A quantitative research method was applied based on a survey using a non-probabilistic technique based on convenience sampling. Secondary, it was studied the relationship between motivational determinants and tourists’ attitude-behaviour in visiting dark tourism sites (Theory of Planned Behaviour, TPB). The survey conducted online was primarily made of 40 items evaluated on the Likert scale. It has been used a sample based on 475 Romanian respondents: 72.3% who had already visited a dark tourism destination in Romania, and 27.8% who stated they planned to visit one. The theoretical framework has analysed five constructs as motivational determinants in the relationships with behavioural construct attitude (TPB). The results show support for two of five research hypotheses (H1 and H4). Dark experience (H1) and Unique learning experience (H4) have a significant and positive effect on Attitude. We did not find any significant effect of Engaging entertainment, Casual interest, and Emotional recreation on Attitude. Hence, H2, H3 and H5 are not supported. Based on these results, the government can develop tourism economic and marketing policy to develop dark tourism as important post-communist niche tourism. The practitioners can develop and promote tourism packages and products by applying the correct use of dark tourism sense. The present scientific paper’s originality is given by the lack of literature review studies based on empirical research on this topic. Limits of the research and future research directions are also pointed out in the conclusion part.