The Effect of Terrorism on Tourism Demand in the Middle East

Abstract

This paper uses a seemingly unrelated regression model (SUR) to test the individual effects of domestic and transnational terrorism on tourism demand to Lebanon, Turkey and Israel over the period 1995–2007. Tourism demand is measured by the logarithm of the number of arrivals to each country. Moreover, this paper tests whether tourism depends on the magnitude of the terrorist attacks by disaggregating terrorism into three levels of intensity – low, medium and high. The results show significant own and spillover effects for domestic and transnational terrorism on tourism demand to each of the three selected countries. In addition, the results show that the effect of terrorism on tourism depends on the intensities of the terrorist attacks.

The tourism-led terrorism hypothesis – evidence from Italy, Spain, UK, Germany and Turkey

“…Research results are also in line with the research conducted so far, which maintains that terrorism affects the number of international tourist arrivals (Bassil, 2014;Buigut & Amendah, 2016;Drakos & Kutan, 2003;Enders et al, 1992;Enders & Sandler, 1991), but they also pointed to the need to appreciate the possibility that the number of international tourist arrivals affects terrorism, which, according to the authors' findings, was only investigated by Goldman & Neubauer-Shani, (2017). The latest results from WTTC, (2017) are in favour of the tested hypothesis, saying that in 2016, global tourism grew by 3.3% despite ongoing terrorist threats.…”

“…Most of the quantitative studies researching tourism and terrorism have utilized a time series approach. Within this approach, scholars have used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) (Enders et al, 1992) and autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models (Muckley, 2010); vector autoregression (VAR) models (Enders & Sandler, 1991), seemingly unrelated regression (SURE) models (Bassil, 2014;Drakos & Kutan, 2003), autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models (Feridun, 2011;Masinde et al, 2016;Raza & Jawaid, 2013), vector error-correction (VECM) (Feridun, 2011;Masinde et al, 2016) models and transfer function (Yaya, 2009).…”

“…Terrorism has a negative impact on revenue from tourism (Enders et al, 1992;Muckley, 2010) and it does not affect only one destination. There is evidence of spillover/substitution and regional effects (Bassil, 2014;Drakos & Kutan, 2003).…”

The influence of terrorism in tourism arrivals: A longitudinal approach in a Mediterranean country

“…The topic of terrorism spillover effects has produced a considerable amount of literature (Veréb, Nobre, & Farhangmehr, 2018). The decline in tourists' arrivals and receipts caused by terrorism is well documented in several countries and regions since the 90s and has affected countries like Spain (Enders & Sandler, 1991), European countries ( (Enders, Sandler, & Parise, 1992;Radić, Dragičević, & Sotošek, 2018), the Mediterranean region (Drakos & Kutan, 2003), non-democratic countries and Africa (Blomberg, Hess, & Orphanides, 2004), the USA (Bonham, Edmonds, & Mak, 2006;Goodrich, 2002), Israel (Eckstein & Tsiddon, 2004;Fleisher & Buccola, 2002;Morag, 2006;Pizam & Fleischer, 2002), Italy (Greenbaum & Hultquist, 2006), Nepal (Baral, Baral, & Nigel, 2004), Ireland (O'Connor, Stafford, & Gallagher, 2008), Fiji and Kenya (Fletcher & Morakabati, 2008), Nigeria (Adora, 2010); Turkey (Feridun, 2011;Ozsoy & Sahin, 2006), Pakistan (Raza & Jawaid, 2013), the Middle East (Bassil, 2014), the Caribbean (Lutz & Lutz, 2018), Tunisia (Lanouar & Goaied, 2019), and worlwide (Liu & Pratt, 2017;Llorca-Vivero, 2008;Neumayer & Plümper, 2016).…”

Analysis of global terrorism dynamics by means of entropy and state space portrait

“…Among the consequences one may infer political effects to respond to the challenge, financial consequences to organize police and military reactions to persecute the actors [9], sociological consequences dictated by losses (human life, property and quietness) and economic consequences because of possible effects resulting from the reallocation of resources [23]. Tourism flow biases, industrial moves, brain drain outflows, emigration in general and remittances drops are good examples of consequences, as well as the demand for insurance for corporations and properties in general [7]. The twentieth century has been classified as the century of wars and crisis, but such a characterization is incomplete.…”