Travel risk in the ecotourism industry amid COVID-19 pandemic: ecotourists’ perceptions

IF 2.4 Q2 HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM

Journal of Ecotourism Pub Date : 2021-06-13 DOI:10.1080/14724049.2021.1938089

Zaiton Samdin, Siti Intan Nurdiana Wong Abdullah, Alfred Khaw, Thanam Subramaniam

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引用次数: 26

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a global turmoil which restricted movement and consequently, diminishing domestic and international travel. One that is severely affected is ecotourism in National Parks, that involves visiting fragile, pristine and undisturbed natural areas. One of the major concerns for ecotourists in destination decision-making is travel risk that could affect their safety. This study aims to examine their risk perception and how it affects the behaviour of ecotourists in Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia. The data was collected from 406 respondents and analysed using structural equation modelling. It is concluded that risk perception affects tourists’ decision-making, whereby health and safety information preference is the strongest predictor, and media’s influence has a very significant connection. This study has the potential of contributing to the management of ecotourism destinations in times of crisis. It also fills the literature gap on risk perceptions of ecotourists’ during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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新冠疫情背景下生态旅游行业的旅游风险:生态游客的认知

摘要新冠肺炎疫情引发了全球动荡，限制了行动，从而减少了国内和国际旅行。其中一个受到严重影响的是国家公园的生态旅游，即参观脆弱、原始和未受干扰的自然区域。生态旅游者在目的地决策中的主要担忧之一是可能影响其安全的旅行风险。这项研究旨在检验他们的风险认知，以及它如何影响马来西亚Taman Negara国家公园生态旅游者的行为。数据收集自406名受访者，并使用结构方程模型进行分析。结果表明，风险感知影响游客的决策，其中健康和安全信息偏好是最有力的预测因素，而媒体的影响具有非常显著的联系。这项研究有可能在危机时期为生态旅游目的地的管理做出贡献。它还填补了新冠肺炎大流行期间生态旅游者风险认知的文献空白。

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来源期刊

Journal of Ecotourism Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

12.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Ecotourism seeks to advance the field by examining the social, economic, and ecological aspects of ecotourism at a number of scales, and including regions from around the world. Journal of Ecotourism welcomes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research, particularly where it contributes to the dissemination of new ideas and models of ecotourism planning, development, management, and good practice. While the focus of the journal rests on a type of tourism based principally on natural history - along with other associated features of the man-land nexus - it will consider papers which investigate ecotourism as part of a broader nature based tourism, as well as those works which compare or contrast ecotourism/ists with other forms of tourism/ists.