The impact of smog on risk perception and satisfaction of international and domestic tourists in Beijing.

Abstract

Frequent natural disasters and epidemic diseases have sparked off an obvious concern over health and safety issues among the public all over the world. Public panic is further enhanced by intense media coverage on such events. Tourism is susceptible to crises because of the optionality and instability of tourist consumption. A considerable number of potential visitors would avoid to visiting certain destinations as they are not assured of enough levels of safety or health. Others would visit but their behaviours and experiences will change owing to higher level of risk perception. The smog or air pollution condition in most city of China has sparked off an intense concern to the public not only in China but also internationally. This research aims at answering the question: 'whether smog condition has exerted effects on tourists' risk perception, travelling satisfaction or loyalty to Beijing as a travelling destination' by exploring the perceptions of on-site international and domestic tourists towards the smog in Beijing. The characteristics of tourists' concern over smog condition were explored by interviewing visitors who finished their trips and were about to leave Beijing. Based on the content analysis of the interviewing materials, as well as the review on studies on human attitudes and responses towards air pollution and tourist perception on health related risks, possible concerns were identified. Afterwards, a scale measuring the degree of tourists' concern over smog conditions was developed. Scales evaluating tourist risk perception, satisfaction and loyalty were drawn from previous research. Comprehensive literature review laida solid foundation to the hypothesised model showing correlations among latent variables. A structural equation model was adopted to test the links among smog concern, risk perception, trip satisfaction and destination loyalty. Additionally, on the premise of cross-group invariance of the model, standardised means of latent variables were compared between international and domestic tourists to compare the levels of smog concern, risk perception, satisfaction and loyalty between these two groups. The outcomes of study on tourists' perception and attitudes resulted in the following findings. Firstly, tourists' concerns over smog consist in the harm on their health, emotion, quality of photos, attractiveness of spots and overall travelling satisfaction. Secondly, direct relationships were found for the hypothesized effects of smog concern on risk perception and satisfaction; the influence of risk perception on reducing satisfaction as well as the role of satisfaction in forming revisit intention (loyalty) was identified; Smog concern and risk perception exert negative impact on loyalty indirectly. Furthermore, the comparing result shows that the levels of smog concern, risk perception and loyalty among international tourists are lower than that of Chinese while difference in satisfaction evaluation is not significant. The broad concerns of this study are applicable across all key Chinese tourism cities visited by international tourists.