Facilitators and Reducers of Korean Travelers’ Avoidance/Hesitation Behaviors toward China in the Case of COVID-19

Heesup Han, Chen Che and Sanghyeop Lee
Additional contact information
Heesup Han: College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea
Chen Che: College of History and Tourism Culture, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China
Sanghyeop Lee: Major in Tourism Management, College of Business Administration, Keimyung University, Daegu 42601, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-13

Abstract: Given that little is known about overseas travelers’ responses and behaviors toward China after the outbreak of COVID-19, this study aimed to uncover risk perception factors and investigate its role in Korean travelers’ avoidance/hesitation behaviors toward China as an international tourism destination in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. To explore the relationship with risk perception, anticipated emotion and avoidance/hesitation behavior, a quantitative method along with an online survey was employed. This focus was on Korean tourists who had traveled to China at least once. Findings revealed that risk perception and negative anticipated emotion are vital facilitators of avoidance/hesitation behaviors, and that positive anticipated emotion reduces such behaviors. The efficacy of a higher-order structure of risk perception, which encompasses six dimensions, was also demonstrated. In addition, destination attachment lowered the influence of risk perception on the formation of avoidance/hesitation behaviors. Overall, our results will help tourism researchers and practitioners understand what factors drive and reduce international travelers’ avoidance/hesitation behaviors toward China in the post-pandemic world. Implications for theory and practice are offered.

Keywords: risk perception; China as an international tourism destination; anticipated emotions; destination attachment; post-pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12345/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12345/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12345-:d:686717

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().