Investigating the Ethical Considerations in the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Tourism: Perceptions of Egyptian Tourists

The rapid innovation in the field of artificial intelligence has raised an urgent necessity to adhere to ethical principles governing its use. Such adherence could improve the effectiveness of AI tools and mitigate the risk of data misuse. Consequently, this study aims to investigate the perceptions towards ethical considerations in the application of AI within the tourism sector. To achieve this aim, the study employed the Spearman rank correlation coefficient to analyze the association between the perceptions of a sample of 387 Egyptian tourists regarding the five dimensions of the ethical considerations scale and trust in using AI applications. The findings revealed that perceived transparency, accountability, privacy, and fairness have a significant positive correlation with trust in AI tools among Egyptian tourists. Conversely, perceived human oversight did not show a significant correlation with trust in AI within the sample. Moreover, the multiple regression analysis indicated that usage frequency did not moderate the relationship between perceived ethical considerations and trust in these tools. Additionally, age can be considered a moderating variable in the association between trust and perceived ethical considerations. Based on these findings, the study proposes recommendations for AI application developers concerning the five ethical dimensions to enhance the performance of AI models within the tourism sector.