How Has COVID-19 Changed the Way We Travel? Exploring Tourist Personality, Reactions to the Perceived Risk and Change in Travel Behavior

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic created novel conditions for researching travel behavior and tourists’ reactions in times of crisis, which largely differs from previous studies of travel behavior affected by local risks or lower travel and recreational risks. This study aims to provide an understanding of the relationship between tourist personality (MINI IPIP-6 and sensation seeking), tourists’ reactions to travel risk perception and changes in their travel behavior influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. To explore this, a global survey including 905 respondents from four countries (Spain, Croatia, Serbia and Russia) was conducted, while data were analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in AMOS. The findings suggest that tourist personality affects the changes in travel behavior influenced by COVID-19, both directly and via their reactions to travel risk.

Exploring The Impact of Perceived Travel Risk Antecedents on Travel Intentions during The Endemic Phase of COVID-19: An Integrative Approach of Protective Motivation Theory (PMT) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)

“…Ideally, a destination country with a contained spread of the disease, preferably with zero active COVID-19 cases for a prolonged period of time, might enhance their inclination to contemplate travel. In addition, the overall epidemiological pattern of the destination is commonly cited when assessing travel risk (Kovačić et al, 2023), thereby instilling trust in the destination (Hall et al, 2020;Hassan et al, 2020;Kostaki et al, 2021). Based upon this information, this study suggests that as the destination's COVID-19 status is improved, the perceived levels of travel risk are consequently improved, thus the following hypothesis is proposed: H1.…”

“…This alteration in travel behavior may ultimately mitigate tourists' perceived travel risk in avoiding destinations with inadequate safety measures (Zenker & Kock, 2020). Several other studies have highlighted the subject of overcrowding in tourist destinations and the need for tourism operators for managing the flow of tourists to ensure safety, wellbeing, and risk perception of visitors (Oklevik et al, 2019;Rahman, 2021;Kovačić et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2023). Hence, the more stringent hygiene and safety measures are, the less the risk perceived travel risk.…”

Profiles of travelers to intermediate-high health risk areas following the reopening of borders in the COVID-19 crisis: A clustering approach

“…In the tourism literature, several papers show that the pandemic has changed tourists' travel behavior and their response to travel risk perception [ 21 , 25 , 26 ]. Recent studies also emphasize the underlying influence of financial and health crises on the tourist profile [ 58 ].…”

“…In our new context, several recent facts suggest that the profile of IHHRT travelers is changing [ [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] ]. Before the pandemic, the number of international travelers was rising all over the world, peaking at 1.46 billion people in 2019 [ 27 ].…”

The Impact of Perceived Quality of Government Subsidies on Residents’ Travel Intention Post-COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

“…Numerous international academics have researched traveler behavior intentions in the context of the outbreak in addition to the impact on tourism in multiple countries and recovery strategies. For example, tourists with different personality traits have different levels of risk perception [3][4][5]. The perception of risk [6] and anxiety [7,8] leads to a change in typical travel behavior.…”