Hurricane impacts on southeastern United States coastal national park visitation

Abstract

As a major contributor to local economies, the tourism industry has been greatly impacted by natural disasters. This study demonstrates the association between tourism economies and impacts of hurricanes in the southeastern United States containing coastal national parks, known for attracting a large number of tourists and having experienced hurricanes. In keeping with two longitudinal data methods (i.e. panel logit model and autoregressive integrated moving average), this study focused on the relationship between the (1) duration, intensity, and damage of hurricanes; (2) existing climate conditions; and (3) tourism demand on park visitation during hurricane and tourism seasons. As a whole, the impacts of hurricanes and climate conditions (precipitation, temperature) were found to have a negative effect on tourism demands (park visitation). With regard to the response of tourism economies to natural disaster damage, parks that experienced stronger natural disasters may be closed for a longer period in order to reconstruct facilities or natural/cultural resources damaged by storms. In an attempt to improve tourism-based regional economies, overcome the challenge of natural disasters on tourism economies, and increase opportunities for establishing disaster management, it is necessary to make an effort to allay unexpected damage to tourism-based areas through proactive plans for disaster mitigation activities.

Impact of unexpected events on inbound tourism demand modeling: evidence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in South Korea

“…Along with the development of quantitative analysis techniques, econometric and time-series models have gained a great deal of popularity in tourism demand modeling (Song & Li, 2008;Song et al, 2010b). For instance, the autoregressive moving average model, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model, and their extensions are the most popular time-series models for tourism demand, which are widely applied by Akal (2004) to forecast international tourism revenues in Turkey, by Chan, Lim, and McAleer (2005) to model multivariate international tourism demand and volatility in Australia, by Wong et al (2007) to examine tourism arrivals to Hong Kong, and by Woosnam and Kim (2014) to investigate hurricane impacts on national park visitation in U.S. On the other hand, econometric models like ADLM and ECM are frequently used because of their superiority in capturing long-run equilibrium, short-run dynamics, and interaction between tourism demand and its main determinants (Lin et al, 2015;Song & Witt, 2003;Song et al, 2011;Wang, 2009;Wong et al, 2007). Other models, such as TVP model (Page et al, 2012), the almost ideal demand system model (AIDS; Kuo et al, 2014;Li, Song, & Witt, 2006), CGE (Blake et al, 2006), are also applied in empirical research.…”

“…investigated impacts of the 21 September 1999 earthquake in Taiwan;Yang, Chen, and Wang (2008) andYang, Wang, and Chen (2011) explored effects of Wenchuan earthquake in China Woosnam and Kim (2014). examined impacts of hurricanes in southeastern U.S. on coastal national park visitation;Ghaderi, Mat Som, and Henderson (2015) investigated effects of the Thai Floods of 2011 on its tourism industry.…”

From 9/11 through Katrina to Covid-19: crisis recovery campaigns for American destinations

“…The situation changed greatly on 11 September 2001, when terrorist attacks occurred in New York and Washington, DC. Since then the number of terrorist incidents occurring in the country has increased significantly, as well as the number of natural disasters (Thapa et al, 2013;Woosnam & Kim, 2014), such as mega-floods in New Orleans and Houston, hurricane in the US Virgin Islands, huge wildfires in California and man-made disasters such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Due to the international interest in this country, each crisis received massive attention from the international media.…”

“…Since 2001, many American destinations have suffered from massive terrorist attacks, floods and pandemics, as well as an increased number of mass shootings, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, coastal pollutions and wildfires (Ritchie et al, 2014;Thapa et al, 2013). In addition, the frequency and amount of these crises, as well as their economic impact and related damages have kept growing over the years (see lists of studies: Thapa et al, 2013;Woosnam & Kim, 2014). In the light of the quick recoveries of most American destinations (CBC, June 6, 2018;Convey, 2015;Hersko, 2019;Szydelko, 2020), exploring the way they dealt with their images during and following tourism crises can offer insights for practitioners.…”

Chain tourism in post-disaster recovery

“…Hurricane damage often disrupts or impedes access to these amenities, resulting in a negative impact on tourism-based economies (Kim and Marcouiller, 2015). For example, Woosnam and Kim (2013) observed decreased park visitorship after major hurricanes along the US coast.…”