Impact of Different Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility on Tourism Demand: Does the Status Quo Matter?

The authors, using discrete choice experiments, study the economic valuation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy measures in sun-and-beach tourist destination demand. They also examine the role of the status quo effect on CSR actions in tourist destinations. The status quo effect occurs because people generally place much more value on avoiding a loss than on acquiring a gain. Visitors to Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) were presented with alternative profiles of CSR measures and were given one of two treatments that varied according to the definition of the status quo alternative and the valuation question. The design of the experiments enabled the authors to compare the respondents' willingness to pay (WTP) a higher price for their holiday in a destination that has in place several CSR measures and willingness to accept (WTA) a lower price for the same destination with a lower CSR profile. The data are modelled using a flexible approach that allows for the consideration of alternative decision rules in the visitor's decision process. The results show that tourists care about CSR attributes and are likely to make their vacation choices on the basis of such attributes. Moreover, in this context the standard economic theory assumption of preferences symmetry is not satisfied. In other words, the cost of not implementing CSR actions is higher than the benefits of implementing them. When a destination increases CSR actions the number of visitors and their WTP for their visit are likely to increase, but at substantially lower rates than the WTP for alternative destinations (WTA) when the destination reduces its CSR actions. These results may explain why conventional studies find ambiguous effects of CSR action on tourist choice.