Impact of health risk perception on avoidance of international travel in the wake of a pandemic

Abstract

As tourists are increasingly putting off their air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has tremendously affected the travel and tourism industry, this study examined the role of negative affect, perceived health risk, perceived uncertainty, and mental wellbeing in forming travel attitudes and temporal avoidance behaviour to global destinations seriously-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic from a U.S. tourist perspective. The crosssectional online survey showed that negative affect as a result of COVID-19 significantly influenced perceived health risk, which in turn induced mental wellbeing and perceived uncertainty. While mental wellbeing significantly predicted attitudes towards international travel and temporal avoidance behaviour, perceived uncertainty significantly predicted short-term avoidance behaviour. The insight obtained from this study provides a mechanism behind tourist avoidance behaviour in times of global health crises and implications for tourism reliant destinations to develop recovery strategies in coping with the impact of the pandemic.

Does International Travel Frequency Affect COVID-19 Biosecurity Behavior in the United States?

“…Second, based on the market segment of travel frequency, the three groups of high, medium, and low show substantial differences with respect to biosecurity behavior practices, significantly expanding past literature on the differences of travel frequencies and diseases spreading during outbreaks [ 1 , 2 , 6 , 7 , 14 , 15 , 34 ]. Third, biosecurity behavior practices are also significantly affected by attitude, followed by personal norm and social norm, expanding the literature between attitude toward international travel and behavior [ 16 ], between social norm and behavior for sustainability consumerism [ 45 ], and social norms and sustainable behavior [ 20 , 21 ].…”

“…Individual attitudes toward COVID-19 restriction measures lead to behaviors such as wearing face masks [ 22 ]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, attitude towards international travel has a significant effect on short- and long-term avoidance behavior [ 16 ]. In line with the literature review above, we suggest the following hypothesis:…”

“…Effective market segmentation improves the communication and efficacy of health advice [ 14 , 15 ], particularly in terms of COVID-19 biosecurity behavior [ 1 ]. Travel frequency is an important basis for health-related consumer segmentation, as it is closely related to the risk of greater exposure to infectious diseases, along with levels of perception of risk by travelers [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 16 , 17 , 18 ], suggesting the need for a better understanding tourists’ biosecurity practices [ 13 ].…”

Hong Kong protests and tourism: Modelling tourist trust on revisit intention

“…HK protest is categorized as travel health risks because HK protest has threatened the safety of tourists exposure to blood, injury, and violence (WHO, 2012), and endangered travellers and local communities. Because of these known risks, which most tourists learned from media, tourists might form negative well-being travel attitudes and avoidance to HK temporarily (Chua et al, 2020; Yang et al, 2018). This has in turn induced a low trust level on revisit intention.…”

The Impact of a Global Crisis on Areas and Topics of Tourism Research

“…Under this theme, on the one hand, many scholars have conducted surveys on tourists' current reactions to travel under COVID-19 and found that the negative impact of COVID-19 has significantly affected the health risks perceived by tourists (for example, [25,[28][29][30]). As a result, tourists' avoidance of travel during the health crisis is caused.…”