Emotional intelligence & ethical decision making in hunting tourism: a virtue based approach

Recent research has indicated that hunting tourism is growing and that hunters tend to act more unethically when hunting as tourists. Informed by an Aristotelian Virtue-Ethics theoretical framework, the researchers propose and test a link between emotional intelligence and ethical decision-making. Specifically, survey-based research tests the relationship between emotional intelligence and ethical decision-making by measuring a hunter's perception of ethical behaviour of self. The multiple regression findings support a relationship between emotional intelligence and ethical decision-making. The proposed theoretical framework and results should inform the development of new evidence and theory-based hunter-education platforms. The framework and results should also provide novel theoretical and evidence-based grounds to study further and enhance the hunting tourism industry.