‘To participate or not to participate?’ A reflective account

Discussions about ethics are often based on whether and how the research affects the physical and psychological well-being of the participants of the study. However, too often discussions concerning the safety and well-being of the researcher are overlooked by tourism scholars. This paper is a reflective account of the ethical dilemmas that I, as a researcher, had to face during an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2007 on the party island of Ios, Greece, with the intent to explore risk-taking behaviour and perceptions of fear among young holidaymakers. Since binge drinking and drug consumption were common activities among the young tourists, I was at risk of being physically and psychologically harmed. As a result, I had to deal with ethical dilemmas during and after the fieldwork. Overall, this paper's contribution to our knowledge is threefold. First, as a reflective exercise, this paper contributes to the ongoing debate on reflexivity in tourism research. Second, it advances our knowledge concerning ethics in tourism. Third, it allows us to have a better understanding of the relationship between research ethics and reflexivity, which has been relatively neglected by tourism scholars.