Tourists’ accounts of responsible tourism

•Analyses tourist’s personal constructions of responsibility.•Establishes the variability in consumer perspectives on responsible tourism.•Maps consumer constructions of responsibility in terms of cultural involvement.•Maps consumer constructions of responsibility by inner and outer goal direction.•Contextualises the processes of tourist positionality in responsible tourism markets.

Responsible tourism’ has become an established area of tourism research and practice and is typically understood as a broad set of tourist interactions that engage with and benefit local communities and minimize negative social and environmental impacts. Extant research however has adopted a largely top down approach to understanding responsible tourism that has marginalized the voices of tourists. This study investigates tourists’ own accounts of responsible tourism experiences, finding that these intersect with but also deviate substantially away from established conceptions of the phenomenon. We show that tourists’ accounts can be delineated according to the extent to which they display inner- versus outer-directed goals, and the degree of involvement in responsible tourism as a cultural identity.