Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of travel motivation on the relationship between perceived risks, travel constraints and visit intention of young women travelers. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative study was performed, and data were collected from 416 female university students using convenience sampling. Structural equation modeling with partial least square approach was used to test the research hypotheses. Findings The findings revealed that travel motivation has a moderating effect by weakening the negative relationships between physical risk, structural constraints and visit intention. Practical implications The findings of this study provide useful insights for destination managers about the influence of travel motivation on the behavioral intention of young women travelers in the case of higher perceptions of travel risks and constraints. Originality/value Literature has discussed the intervening role of travel motivations in different contexts. However, studies are scarce in examining the effect of travel motivation in weakening the negative influence of high perceptions of risks and constraints on intention to visit.

In medical travel, previous studies have investigated the factors that influence medical travellers to receive treatment outside the country. However, most of these studies are limited to travel motivations and perceptions of medical services at destinations. The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between medical travellers’ perceived risks, travel constraints, and destination image based on medical and non-medical attributes. This is a quantitative study whereby the data was collected from 306 sub-Saharan African medical travellers, who visited India for the treatment. The study found that physical-health risk has a significant negative influence on destination image based on medical attributes. The service quality risk has a negative effect on destination image based on both medical and non-medical attributes, and destination risk has a negative effect on destination image based on medical attributes. The study also found that travel constraints have a negative influence on both medical and non-medical destination image.

Background: To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the Saudi Arabian government introduced a number of measures in different phases (e.g. social distancing, curfew and lockdown). Aims: This study describes the distribution of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia during different phases of prevention strategies and assesses their effect on controlling the spread of the disease. Methods: This cross-sectional study used COVID-19 data for 2 March–5 July 2020 from the Ministry of Health website. The period was divided into five phases based on prevention strategies implemented to control the infection. The incidence rate, point prevalence, case fatality rate, overall mortality rate and recovered rate for COVID-19 infection were assessed at the national, regional and city levels. Results: At the end of phase 5 on 5 July 2020, the nationwide incidence of COVID-19 was 11%, total recovered rate 70%, case fatality rate 0.9% and adjusted case fatality rate 1.4% (adjusted for time lag for mortality). The COVID-19 point prevalence increased from phase 1 (2.1/100 000 population) to phase 5 (178.2/100 000 population). A high recovered rate (68.7%) was seen in phase 4 accompanied with lower overall mortality and incidence in phase 5. The eastern region of Saudi Arabia had the highest point prevalence of COVID-19 infection (450.5 per 100 000 population), while Jeddah and Mecca had the highest overall mortality.

Purpose This study, a symposium, aims to explore the determinants of financial inclusion, impact of cross-country income-variations on financial inclusion, do high-income countries really uplift the financial inclusion and does the higher financial inclusion index indicate the larger economy? Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the panel data model to investigate the impact of high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries on financial inclusion. However, this study further adopts the principal component analysis rather than Sarma’s approach to calculate the financial inclusion index. Findings Based on the Data of World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Development Indicators, this study concludes that there is no nexus between income variations and financial inclusion, as the study reveals that some low- and middle-income countries have greater financial inclusion index such as Thailand (2.8538FII), Brazil (1.9526FII) and Turkey (0.8582FII). In low- and middle-income countries, the gross domestic product per capita, information technology and communication, the rule of law, age dependency ratio and urbanization have a noteworthy impact on financial inclusion that accumulatively describe the 83% of the model. Whereas, in high-income countries, merely, information technology and urbanization have a substantial influence on the growth of financial revolution and financial inclusion that describes the 70% of the total. Research limitations/implications The biggest limitation is the availability of data from different countries. Originality/value The originality of this paper is its technique, which is used in this paper to calculate the financial inclusion index. Furthermore, this study contributes to 40 different countries based on income, which could help to boost financial inclusion, and ultimately, it leads them toward economic growth.