Travel participation of Germans before and during the COVID-19 pandemic – the effects of sociodemographic variables

Sascha Filimon, Cathrin Schiemenz, Elisabeth Bartl, Erik Lindner, Philipp Namberger and Jürgen Schmude

Current Issues in Tourism, 2022, vol. 25, issue 24, 4031-4046

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic led to global disruptions – especially in tourism. As a result, travel participation decreased. Thus, the proportion of Germans (18–85a) travelling (≥5d) between March and December decreased from 76% in 2019 to 56% in 2020. To better understand who travels during the COVID-19 pandemic or not, we used two population-representative surveys of the German-speaking residential population. Applying a Gradient Boosting Machine, we compared the pandemic year 2020 (n = 5,823) with the non-pandemic year 2019 (n = 7,366). Considering 12 sociodemographic variables in two models, we predict their relative influence on the probability of leisure travel participation in the respective years. The 2019 model shows a relatively high accuracy (71%), whereas the accuracy of the 2020 model decreases to 59%, indicating that the variables used have lost importance. Results show, e.g. that household income and age are the two most important predictors for travel participation. However, their importance reversed due to the pandemic, with age being the most relevant predictor for travel participation during COVID-19. Using Partial Dependence Plots, we compare the direction, impact, and functional form of all variables regarding travel participation for both years – and thus identify who travels during the pandemic.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2022.2071684 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:rcitxx:v:25:y:2022:i:24:p:4031-4046

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2022.2071684

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().