A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF TOURISM STUDENTS’ ETHICS AWARENESS, INTENTION AND ORIENTATION

ABSTRACT Ethical perception, intention and orientation of tourism students have become an increasing concern in the literature. This study aims to measure ethical perception of tourism students at different education levels in tourism faculties and vocational schools in Turkey by utilizing the Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES). Selected doctoral, master’s, bachelor’s, vocational school level tourism students were examined to compare the ethical awareness among them. In total, 177 responses were achieved. The findings showed that the participants perceived a higher level of ethics awareness in environmental scenario than social and economic scenarios. The ethical decision mean scores according to approaches were higher for justice and relativism theories compared to deontology (ethics codes, duties, principles). Tourism students’ ethics approach intention was not influenced whether they took ethics courses before or not. The findings supported that, female students were more sensitive to ethical issues than male students from ethical orientation perspective. Contrary, there were no significant differences between males and females in terms of  the ethical intention.


INTRODUCTION
The ethics concept is formalized as a combination of ethical principles, values, and standards that regulate what is good and bad in individuals and groups behavioral relationship and examining concepts such as benefit, good, right and wrong (Hatcher, 2004). Brinkmann (2002) explained ethics as a discipline that true and false, good and evil, virtue and virtuelessness are systematically reviewed (Brinkmann, 2002). Kırel (2000) defined ethics as a structure of trustful and virtuous principles or senses that manage the behavior of an individual or a profession group. The concept of ethics states that there is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. By distinguishing these differences, a human has to do the best of and always right to behave ethically (Aslan and Kozak, 2006).
Ethics issues for any businesses have become an increasing concern. Increased responsibilities for the businesses towards the environment, the effectiveness of environmentalists, green movements, consumer rights, immense customer satisfaction, growing role of women in business life, sensitization of sexual harassment issues are among the reasons that explain why businesses are more sensitive to ethics (Pelit and Güçer, 2007). In this case, the businesses should expect their employees to act according to certain rules. Regardless the type of industry and business some general rules as ethical principles must guide the behavior of the employees.
Being labor intensive is the main characteristic of the tourism industry. There is a human factor on both demand and supply sides. Therefore ethics has vital importance to build social norms and to regulate employee relationship with the customer (Amoah and Baum, 1997). Individuals' ethical perceptions and values differ from person to person. In the service industry, organizations must develop shared and common values for every employee to obey (Schaefer, 1991). The written ethics codes aim to provide an environment which leads individuals' ethical behavior (Hogan, 1992). The written ethics codes are the instruction to deal with complex ethical issues (Lerman, 1990). Written ethics codes must be a mother law of employees in an organization. These codes motivate organizations, employers, employees, and customers (Feltenstein, 1999). The ethics codes in an organization are the frameworks of an employee's behavior (Beasley, 1995). Ethical standards are the formalized rules for defining the objectives and principles of the organization for the employee (Kozak and Güçlü, 2006). Krohn and Ahmed (1992) argued the need to create the ethics codes for the marketing of tourism services. The authors suggested that international tourism marketers representing different segments of the tourism industry (airlines, resorts, hotels, motels, restaurants, tour operators, travel agencies, cruise ships, etc.) should develop an ethical code of corporate behavior to discipline their members from violating the ethical values and standards of host. The standards, which are widely accepted such as "truth in advertising", are required in the operation of tourism marketing.
Tourism is related to refreshment, enthusiasm, happy moments; but sometimes it is a source of tension for a tourist because of unethical issues. Fleckenstein and Huebsch (1999) gave examples of the importance of ethical approach in tourism. "…Published advertisement, TV, brochure, are effective ways to sell a location or product in tourism. The tourist calls for reservations at the "five-star" hotel and after arrival finds a "onestar" hotel with a pond as a pool, dirty towels, sheets, ...". For instance, in a travel blog on the Internet, a hotel can comment spurious on the quality of service and satisfaction level of customers based on questionnaires. Another example for unethical behavior is a night desk employee in a hotel who is not well paid may not sell the room to a "walk in" or individual customer to give financial damages to the company. There are many examples of marketing, behavioral, economic dimensions of unethical behaviors. There are also social and environmental dimensions of unethical patterns in tourism industry, and these affect public and locals. In India for example, women must walk miles to get water because hotels siphon it off from the ground water for their excessive uses; while, in Burma, thousands of Burmese are forced to move from their living area to make way for huge new tourism developments. These examples in short and long term may damage the tourism industry. Tourism is a system that if one component is damaged, the rest may not be satisfying for both demand and supply sides. Corrupted environment, ignored locals and culture, unpaid or low-paid employees, may make happy probably nobody. The issues such as unstandardized hotel pricing and services, breaking contracts or promises sabotage the trust and decrease the income (McCarthy, 1996). This kind of unethical behaviors prevents the development of high-quality tourism services. Hospitality industry needs to build trust between the organization, employee, customer (McDonald, 1996) locals, culture, and the environment. Hudson and Miller (2005b) reported that if tourism organizations promote ethical awareness and behavior, their profits, prestige, relation with the employee will potentially increase positively. According to Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2003), it is evident that unethical behavior of organizations and employees can lead to financial loose.

TOURISM, EDUCATION AND ETHICS
Tourism consists of social, cultural and economic components that involve the displacement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes (UNWTO, 2016). Tourism is about travel, visitors and travelers. The basic factors which lead people to travel are business, curiosity, religion, culture, education, relaxation, sport, health, snobbism, friend/relatives visit and meetings (Usta, 1995). In recent years, tourism has shown significant growth around the world and Turkey. The growth in international tourist arrivals is outstanding; from 25 million globally in 1950, to 278 million in 1980, 527 million in 1995, and 1184 million in 2015. According to UNWTO's long-term forecasts, international tourist arrivals worldwide will increase to 1.8 billion by 2030. With a variety of historical and ancient sites, unique beaches along its Aegean, Mediterranean, Black Sea coasts and rich regional cuisines, Turkey became a popular destination for culture, faith, gastronomy, eco, adventure, sport, SPA, and health care tourism. UNWTO (2016) reported that 35.7 million foreign tourists visited Turkey, and the country ranked as the 6th most popular tourist destination in the world and 4th in Europe. Every 1 of 11 jobs in the world is related to tourism. World Travel and Tourism Council's Economic Impact Report (2016) stated that 283,578,000 employees were directly related to tourism in 2015 (9.5% of total employment). In this report, it is forecasted that, by 2026, tourism will support 370,204,000 employees (11% of total employment) all over the world. Hotels, travel agencies, airways and other passenger transportation services are the main sectors for employment in tourism. In addition, the food and beverage businesses and leisure industries directly promoted by tourism (WTTC, 2016).
Nowadays the importance of education is well understood for successful development of quality tourism (Heskett, 1988). Moreover, this success can be achieved first by giving proper education to tourism students. Education in Turkey starts with preschool education and continues with primary, secondary, vocational, and university education. Early serious tourism education in Turkey began in the 1940s. Until 1960s, cooks and waiters were educated with courses (Ağaoğlu, 1991). Nowadays, vocational schools educate students as the workforce for special areas. In Turkey, there were 125 Anatolian Vocational High Schools that teach in tourism with 32,748 students by the end of 2013. The Anadolu Chefs / Hotel and Tourism Vocational Schools are four-year vocational schools preparing students both for the industry and the higher education (MEB, 2013). Associate degree programs consist of 4 semesters and educate average employees for special areas such as tourism. Associate degree in tourism began in the 1970s (Ünlüönen and Boylu, 2005). These programs include Hotel Management, Travel Management and Tourist Guidance. Faculty education consists of 8 semesters. This education aims to prepare managers (Pauze, 1993), planners and investors for the sector. Tourism education at master level (4 semesters) and postgraduate level (8 semesters) provides service to those who want to specialize in tourism or want to make an academic career. The person who holds a Ph.D. degree can become an academician at universities (Demirkol and Pelit, 2002).
Doubtless, tourism is one of the key drivers of socioeconomic progress, and it is the leading sector for the economic development of the countries and Turkey. Besides, tourism employees and their education can be accepted as one of the important issues of tourism. When looked at the "backstage" of the tourism sector, it is going to be understood that tourism industry has not similar form compared to other sectors. Tourism is a service industry and it associates labor at its every level with the consumer continuously. Therefore it is an obligation for tourism students from every level to understand the nature of tourism (Baum, 2005). Because of the excessive growth of tourism and being the labor intensive sector, ethical issues concern education, employer, employee, customer, and literature. While planning and operating tourism services, ethical perception and decision-making ability are needed. Therefore, tourism faculties/schools must create an ethical background, the ability of ethical decision making and ethics awareness for tourism students. Tourism students must be conscious about not only the tourism service issues but also ethics awareness on the impact of tourism on investments, environment, and social life. Because they will become tourism service investors, planners or providers in the future.
Some studies were conducted on the ethical orientation and the ethical awareness of tourism students (Whitney, 1989;Freedman and Bartholemew, 1990;Small, 1992;Kaynama et al., 1996;Okleshen and Hoyt, 1996;Khan and McCleary, 1996;Smith and Oakley, 1997;Fennel and Malloy, 1999;Cohen et al., 2001;Stevens, 2001;Kracher et al., 2002;Hudson and Miller, 2005a). Lee and Tsang (2013) concluded that the students had a high level of ethical perception and knew the importance of ethics in the working environment. For some research, teaching ethics to tourism students was the subject. Martin (1998) expressed that promoting consciousness and sensitivity to personal honesty should be one of the aims of all tourism education. Tourism students admitted if ethics was taught at tourism programs, their business life would be affected positively (Lundberg, 1994). According to Khan and McCleary (1996), to be able to give a right decision, students wanted to promote ethical awareness. They must be able to inspect ethical issues and apply them. Considerable ethical decision-making standards were offered for teaching ethical decision making. Some courses were designed to improve student reaction on their behaviors in everyday situations to increase ethical awareness (Enghagen, 1990). Not only tourism student but also impact of ethics on management students related to educational background and work experience was analyzed. Laczniak and Inderrieden (1987) found no difference in ethical beliefs of MBA students with technical versus with non-technical students. Also, Stevens and et al. (1989) explored some differences between the ethical beliefs of managers and business students or attorneys and law students. A clear understanding of business ethics was a "must" for students for their improvement at work (Christy and Coleman, 1991). In a study, carried by Enghagen and Hott (1992), the hospitality students' perception of most pressing ethical issues in the hospitality industry were measured. As a result, discrimination and employment relationship and air water pollution ranked as the most important issue. A study was conducted by Stevens and Fleckenstein (1999) to evaluate ethical scenarios were ethical or unethical. 84 human resource managers and 81 university students were respondents. It was found that there was the need to explain the ethical codes to a new employee.

METHODOLOGY
There has been diversity in the methods used by researchers to investigate ethical perception and awareness. Using ethical scenarios were the most useful way of examining ethical perception and awareness of tourism students. Therefore, Hudson and Miller's (2005a) questionnaire was used to examine ethical decision-making ability of tourism students. Hudson and Miller used Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) to evaluate the real life scenarios. The MES, developed by Reidenbach and Robin (1990), reveals an ethic evaluation within the philosophical views of justice, relativism, egoism, utilitarianism, and deontology. The philosophical view of justice is rooted in one's belief in moral equity and equitable treatment for everyone concerned with a questionable action. The philosophical view of relativism identifies where certain rules may not be acceptable in one culture but may be acceptable in another. The philosophical view of egoism promotes an individual's long-term interests. Utilitarian actions would be those done for the greatest good. The philosophical view of deontology identifies obligations of unwritten or implied contracts (Shawver, 2008). Hudson and Miller (2005a), in their research, used a questionnaire with six real life scenarios and six actions to analyze tourism students' decision-making processes. These scenarios were all related to actual tourism issues. The first and fifth scenarios were based on social dilemmas; second and fourth scenarios were based on environmental dilemmas; and third and sixth were economic. The first social dilemma (1) related to the tour operator who does not reflect the extra costs to disabled customers until now, but changed the pattern and applied an additional charge for disabled and decreased the number of clients. The other social scenario (5) the community living on an island refuses to work on Sundays because of religious reason. However, an airway, which is the only company land to the island, put flights on Sundays. The environment scenario (2) is a resort hotel flows waste water to the sea that it destroys corals in the sea. Second environment scenario (4) is a company wants to build a golf resort with 72 hole golf course. Locals worried about the use of electric and water sources and fisherman concerned about pesticides used on the golf course affect the ecosystem. The economic scenario (3) is about redundancies in a tour operator. 20 new employees were dismissed because of financial reasons. Second economic scenario (6) is about the unjust gain of a very low waged representative.
The participants identified whether or not the action was ethical and whether they would complete each action on a seven-point numerical scale ranging from 1 as positive to 7 as negative. The responses for Justice consisted of "just/unjust", "fair/unfair", or "morally right/not morally right"; for Relativism "acceptable to my family/not acceptable to my family", "culturally acceptable/culturally unacceptable", and "traditionally acceptable/traditionally unacceptable"; for Utilitarianism "produces maximum utility/produces least utility" and "maximizes benefits while minimizes harm/minimizes benefits while maximises harm"; for Deontology "does not violate an unwritten contract/ violates a written contract" and "violates an unspoken promise/does not violate an unspoken promise" (Table 1). In addition, the ethical intention was measured using two items. One was (I would/would not undertake the same action), and the other (my peers would/would not undertake the same action). The last item on the scale measured the level of ethical orientation (the action is ethical/unethical) (Hudson and Miller, 2005a). Produces the greatest benefit to all 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Does not produce the greatest benefit to all Minimizes benefits while maximizes harm 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Does not minimize benefits while maximizes harm Violates an unspoken promise 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Does not violate an unspoken promise Does not violate an unwritten contract 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Does not violates an unwritten contract I would undertake the same action 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 I would not undertake the same action My peers would undertake the same action 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 My peers would not undertake the same action The action is ethical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The action is unethical Furthermore, tourism students were asked to indicate their gender, and whether or not they were experienced a course in ethics, and whether or not have working experience in tourism sector. The questionnaires were distributed to the tourism students at the aforementioned levels in tourism programs in Turkey. It is told students how to complete the questionnaire and managed to be filled during the course. Tourism students were told that their participation was voluntary. One hundred ninety-five (195) students completed the questionnaire, and 177 usable responses were obtained after incomplete questionnaires were excluded from the research.

FINDINGS
The participants included 85 (48%) males and 92 females (52%), the average age was 21-25 (n=105), the minimum frequency of age was 36 and over (n=4). Of the 177 respondents, 20 were Ph.D/Master student, 70 faculty student and 87 (49, 2%) vocational school students (see Table  2). It was asked if they had ever taken ethics courses and 58.2% of them answered as "No". And 84.7% of them worked in tourism sector before.
These numbers indicate the lack of importance given to Ethics courses in education. Even 84.7% of them worked in tourism, more than half of students did not take ethics courses before. Therefore, to analyze ethics courses experience in-depth, a cross tabulation was applied.
Approximately half of female (47.6%) and male (52.4%) respondents did not take ethics courses before. The respondents who did not meet with ethics courses before are mainly at the age between 21-25 (60.2%) and 20 and under (28.2%). Mostly vocational students (53.4%) and faculty students (38.8%) and 87.4% (n=90) tourism students, who experienced tourism before, did not take ethics courses before. A reliability test was applied for each scenario. Cronbach Alpha Scores and also mean scores for each scenario was listed below ( Table 4). All of the reliability test scores for each scale were over 0.91. Factor analysis was conducted to test whether the questions in each scenario would be included in the same group. As expected, the variables were appeared to be under a total of sixfactor headings (Table 5), and their means were shown at tables (Table 4). From the perspective of scenario ranking, the effect of tourism on the environment took the highest score, compared to the economic related scenario and social scenario.
It can be concluded that the participants might think that the unconscious use of nature, which are the main attractions of tourism, might lead to the destruction of these resources in the long term. Also, economic dilemma scenarios took the second highest mean scores. The respondents were aware that unethical decision in the short term would lead to a financial loss in the long term. Compared to other scenarios the socio-cultural effect of tourism took its place at the end. It can be concluded that the result of the negative sociocultural effects of tourism was not fully adopted by the respondents. One of the social scenarios (5) took the lowest mean (Table 4). This scenario related with a community living on an island refused to work on Sundays because of religious reason. However, an airway, which is the only company landed to the island, put flights on Sundays. The respondent found it less unethical. Probably, respondents evaluated the scenario, and they focused on if scenario hedonistic or utilitarian. The mean scores were calculated for each scenario by ethical dimension and ethics courses experience ( Table 6). The mean scores showed that for Justice, Relativism and relatively Utilitarianism, all students considered the actions taken in the environment scenarios found to be more unethical than the economic and social scenarios. However, social scenarios were scored most negatively that means students decided it as less unethical. These results gave an opinion that ethical decision-making approach was under the influence of ethical scenario faced and from the perspective of ethical decision, environmental ethics concern was more than the other scenarios. From this point of view, this result was similar to the studies of Holden, 2003;Hudson and Miller, 2005a;Hudson and Miller, 2005b. Experiencing ethics courses previously, might lead differences on the answers. Therefore scenarios and approaches were compared by if respondents took ethics courses before. As it is seen in Table  6, there is no significant difference in the results, which means; previously, respondents either took ethics courses or not was not affected their answers. From this perspective, results showed similarities with Hudson and Miller (2005a)'s study.
When the answers were evaluated from the standpoint of views/approaches, justice view, which pointed out to be fair and just, and relativism view, which was cultural and traditional acceptability, took the highest mean scores (Table 6). It is clear that the deontological view, which contained the normative rules, guidelines, duties, and principles have been established by society or organization, took the last place in the mean scores. The ethics codes in use today are the result of deontology view.
Probably young students thought that, whatever the scenario was, reaching the fair, true, just, and the ethical result could not be by the rules, guidelines or codes. This might be due to the cultural structure. In Turkish society generally "ethics" issues, wrong and right, true or false, fair and unfair concepts are taught to children while they grow up in the family. Therefore the view of relativism (cultural and traditional acceptability) got one of the highest mean scores. The students made their decision if it was acceptable to their culture, tradition, and society. It is possible to conclude that the student's ethical decisions for tourism scenarios both fair and just (Justice), and culturally and traditionally acceptable (Relativism) were stronger than taking ethical decisions according to written ethics codes (Deontology). ANOVA test was employed to compare the means of students' education level by ethics approach. There was a statistically significant difference (Table 7) for Justice (F (2.174) = 5.482, p>=0.005); for Relativism (F (2.174) = 4.521, p>= 0.012). These results indicate that choosing the ethics approach was affected by education level. In addition, there was no significant result for Utilitarian and Deontology approaches. For the further investigation to determine differences between the groups, Post Hoc analysis was applied. Moreover, the result showed that faculty students significantly took more ethical decision for Justice (fair, just, morally right) and Relativism (Acceptable to my family, Traditionally acceptable, Culturally acceptable) approaches compared to vocational school students.
On the MES scale last three items were used to examine ethical intention (I would/would not undertake the same action, my peers would/would not undertake the same action) and ethics orientation as the action is ethical/ unethical. An independent t test was applied to compare ethical intention and orientation for female and male ( concluded that female students are more sensitive to ethical issues than male students. Compare to male students; ethical orientation is higher in females. Besides, the ethical intention was not influenced by gender in this test. In addition, another independent t test was conducted to compare ethical intention and orientation for respondents who took ethics courses before and who did not. There was no significant result. Therefore, ethical intention and orientation were not influenced by previous ethics education (Table 8).

CONCLUSION
Ethical behaviour results in more successful business for customers, workers, management, the community and the company (Jazsay, 2001). Tourism is a human focused service industry. Therefore, it is important for employees and companies to perform ethical behaviour in their business to capture and maintain success. In this study, as the service providers of the future, tourism students' ethics awareness, intention, and orientation were evaluated by several variables.
Primarily, 58.2% of tourism students were not experienced ethics courses before. This number indicates the lack of importance given to ethics courses in tourism education. Regarding gender, half of female (47.6%) and male (52.4%) tourism students did not take ethics courses before. The respondents who did not meet with ethics courses before were mainly at the age between 21-25 (60.2%). When ethics approaches of the students were compared by ethics courses experience, it was found that tourism students' ethics approach intention was not influenced according to whether they took ethics courses before. From this perspective, results show similarities with Hudson and Miller (2005a) and Okleshen and Hoyt (1996)'s studies. It is great misfortune to conclude that "ethics courses do not reach the aim. Therefore, some precautions should be taken to ensure that the ethics courses reach their goals." Ethics courses should be taught in tourism schools for sustainable tourism and longlasting success in business and students should be educated for more sensitive approach and awareness to ethics issues. Doubtless, tourism students will face ethics dilemmas in their professional business life. Therefore, to find a solution, to give just, morally right decisions and to behave ethically they have to get high level of ethics education.
Secondly, the students found the effect of tourism on the environment scenarios as the most unethical one, followed by economic scenarios and social scenarios respectively. They found these scenarios and actions as unethical and might think that the unconscious use of the natural environment, which is the main component and attractions of tourism, might lead to the destruction of these resources in the longterm. Also, economic dilemma scenarios took the second highest mean scores. Participants were aware that unethical short-term decisions would cause long-term financial loss. For social scenarios, it can be concluded that result of the negative socio-cultural effects of tourism was not fully adopted by the respondents. The tourism students found socio-cultural related scenario still unethical but with the less mean score. Probably, while respondents were evaluating the scenarios from an ethical perspective, they also focused on the issue that whether the benefits are only for the individuals or for the community. The scenario is open to debate; to become wealthier in the future than today, may people ignore some religious values for a short-term or not? Individuals or organizations should not play with societies' basic dynamics (such as religion) under the name of "tourism" or "earnings". If the locals start to lose the culture, the destination may turn into somewhere ordinary in the world. Tourism students were less aware that culture is an important component of tourism. Therefore, ethics instructors must stress on the ethics and culture relationship in tourism.
Furthermore, the answers were evaluated from the perspective of ethical views/approaches, Justice view, which point out to be fair and just, and relativism view, which is culturally and traditionally acceptability, took the highest mean scores. The students made their decision related to tourism scenarios if it was acceptable to their culture, tradition, and society. It possible to conclude that the student's ethical decisions for tourism scenarios both fair and just (Justice), and culturally and traditionally acceptable (Relativism) were stronger compared to taking ethical decisions according to written ethics code (Deontology). The ethical views/approaches were under the influence of ethical scenario and from the perspective of ethical approaches, environmental ethics concern is more than the other scenarios. From this point of view, this result is similar to the studies of Holden (2003), Hudson and Miller (2005a), Hudson and Miller (2005b). In addition, the deontological view, which the normative rules, guidelines, duties, and principles were established by society or organization, took the last place in the mean score ranking. The ethics codes in use today are the result of deontology view. Probably tourism students thought that, whatever the scenario was, reaching the fair, true, just, and the ethical result cannot be by the rules, guidelines or codes. This is may be the result of the cultural structure of society. In Turkish society, "ethics issues", wrong and right, true or false, fair and unfair concepts were taught to children generally as viral advice while they grow up in the family by parents. Because of the viral advice in the childhood, they might be ignoring the written ethics codes for their future business, but the viral advice or speeches are not efficient in an organization or constitution. Written ethics codes are the common and shared values and principles for all in an organization. Defining ethics codes helps employees and managers to recognize acceptable behavior (Stevens, 1999). What is said might not be remembered but what is written lasts forever. As the tourism employee in the future, tourism student should consider written codes to increase all utilities of tourism. Ethical principles will maximize all the benefits of tourism (Aslan and Kozak, 2006). Therefore, ethics codes must be another important topic of ethics courses for tourism students.
Lastly, ethical intention and orientation were tested by gender. It can be concluded that female students were more sensitive to ethical issues than male students from ethical orientation perspective. Beltramini et al. (1984), Ferrell and Skinner (1988), Ruegger and King (1992), Whipple and Swords (1992) reached the similar results on their study. Besides, the ethical intention was not influenced by gender in this study.
Planning and operating tourism require social, environmental, cultural sensitivity and professional behavior. Therefore, to reach awareness, ethics courses must be given to tourism students of every level, by utilizing case studies and scenarios. For the ethics courses, ethical dilemmas and real life scenarios must be developed for tourism students to evaluate, define, and analyze problems regarding to make ethics decisions. In addition, law perspective should not be ignored. Tourism students must learn and know what they will encounter with when they do not act ethically.
The findings of this research suggest opportunities for future researchers. This study aimed to measure ethical perception of tourism students at different education levels in tourism faculties and vocational schools in Turkey. Conducting the research only on the tourism students is the limitation of this study. For future and similar studies, sampling could be expanded to every level of tourism employees and students to reach multiple comparisons. In addition, the effects of personality types or culture on ethical decision making can be potential issues for future research.