The Post-Coronavirus World in the International Tourism Industry: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Safer Destination Choices in the Case of US Outbound Tourism

Abstract

The tourism industry has been seriously suffering from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis ever since its outbreak. Given this pandemic situation, the major aim of this study is to develop a conceptual framework that clearly explains the US international tourists’ post-pandemic travel behaviors by expanding the theory of planned behavior (TPB). By utilizing a quantitative process, the TPB was successfully broadened by incorporating the travelers’ perceived knowledge of COVID-19, and it has been deepened by integrating the psychological risk. Our theoretical framework sufficiently accounted for the US tourists’ post-pandemic travel intentions for safer international destinations. In addition, the perceived knowledge of COVID-19 contributed to boosting the prediction power for the intentions. The associations among the subjective norm, the attitude, and the intentions are under the significant influence of the tourists’ psychological risks regarding international traveling. The comparative criticality of the subjective norm is found. Overall, the findings of this study considerably enhanced our understanding of US overseas tourists’ post-pandemic travel decision-making processes and behaviors.

Preventive Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Associations With Perceived Behavioral Control, Attitudes, and Subjective Norm

“…Several COVID-19 studies have shown that the perceived knowledge and understanding of the disease is associated with intentions to engage in preventive behavior (23,36,37,43). More specifically, accurate knowledge of COVID-19 is positively associated with attitudes and subjective norms (36), the actual practice of preventive measures (23), and following governmental lockdown implementations (37). Promoting accurate knowledge across the entire population may be a challenge, but one that affords the potential to increase adherence to precautions.…”

“…With regard to the TPB framework, the three core components typically did not moderate each other, which indicates that the relationship between these factors is not interactive. It might be more appropriate to modify the paths within the TPB framework differently and to add other moderating variables: Several studies suggest a causal effect of subjective norm on attitudes, such that people's perceived social pressure from critical others contributes to increasing their attitudes toward specific behaviors (36,47,48). Moreover, Han et al (36) found that psychological risk moderated the association between subjective norm and attitudes.…”

“…All predictors were standardized, and the analyses controlled for all six demographic covariates. We did not use structural equation modeling as some other research has adopted (36,37) because our focus was on specific single-item behaviors, and singleitem measures are not appropriate for latent variables. All our variables of interest are manifest.…”

The Concept of Sustainable Rural Tourism Development in the Face of COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Russia

“…Taking into account that tourism is a part of the service sector where consumers are in the focus of business activity, it is crucial for tourism and hospitality market actors to adjust to the obvious shift in consumer behavior, especially to travel safety considerations and increased interest to domestic destinations (Han et al 2020;. As Sheth (2020) predicts, it is likely that consumers will go back to old habits, but their behavior will stay modified by new regulations and procedures in the way they shop and buy products and services.…”

Russian Tourism Enterprises’ Marketing Innovations to Meet the COVID-19 Challenges

“…The most important changes are the enormous disease-avoidance motive and fastgrowing interest of tourists in all countries in domestic destinations [54], both "close-tohome" ones for short (i.e., weekend) trips, and new ones for longer trips. Potential tourists, realizing the dangers and consequences of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease, are likely to be guided by travel-safety considerations when planning their travels, and are likely to prefer domestic tourism to outbound tourism [55]. At the same time, tourist regions and destinations in which the number of COVID-19 cases (for both locals and tourists) is high, risk losing their attractiveness in the eyes of travelers and face difficulties in attracting new guests in the future due to image deterioration [56].…”