The synergistic effect of natural disaster frequency and severity on inbound tourist flows from the annual perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2021.100832Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The impacts of multiple natural disasters are researched from an annual perspective.

  • Disaster frequency is identified as a vital variable to assess the impact of natural disaster from an annual perspective.

  • The synergistic effect of the frequency and severity of natural disaster on inbound tourist flows is empirically examined.

  • Natural disaster severity negatively influences inbound tourist flows, but disaster frequency indicates a positive effect.

  • Natural disaster frequency positively moderates the relationship between natural disaster severity and inbound tourist flows.

Abstract

The impacts of natural disasters on inbound tourism have recently received growing attention due to the increased frequency of natural disasters. Previous literature has reached different conclusions on the effects of disaster severity and frequency, and few studies have considered both the severity and frequency of natural disasters in the same statistical model. The synergistic effect of these two attributes of natural disasters is unrevealed herein. To enhance the current knowledge, this paper assesses the impacts of both the severity and frequency of natural disasters on the inbound tourist flows of destination countries from an annual perspective. We integrate 258,401 bilateral tourist movements and 9892 natural disasters in 177 countries between 1995 and 2018 and analyze the data using a panel regression. The results show that disaster severity deters tourists from visiting destinations, but disaster frequency indicates a positive effect. We also identify the positive moderating effect of disaster frequency.

Introduction

The tourism industry has become more vulnerable (Rosselló, Becken, & Santana-Gallego, 2020) owing to the growing frequency of natural disasters (Becken, Mahon, Rennie, & Shakeela, 2014; Chiou, Huang, Tsai, Lin, & Yu, 2013). In 2019 alone, at least 396 mass natural disasters killing 11,755 people and resulting in 95 million victims and nearly US$130 billion in economic losses were reported around the world (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [CRED], 2020). Many famous destination countries, such as Japan, the United States, Thailand, and China, suffer from frequent natural disasters. For example, in 2019, the United States of America had 20 mass disasters, and Japan had 10 mass disasters, as reported by CRED. This was not a special phenomenon that only occurred in 2019. According to CRED (2020), there are more than 300 mass natural disasters on average in the world every year with many destination countries suffering multiple natural disasters a year (see Table 1). However, to date, the existing literature has overlooked the frequency of natural disasters, and studies that investigate the effects of disaster frequency on inbound tourist arrivals from an annual perspective are scarce.

The impacts of destination natural disasters on tourism can be studied from the tourist perspective (Dowling & Staelin, 1994; Roehl & Fesenmaier, 1992; Walters, Mair, & Ritchie, 2015) and destination perspective (Ghimire, 2015; Tsai & Chen, 2011; Woosnam & Kim, 2014). From the perspective of destination management, the reality is that multiple natural disasters may hit the same destination country in the same year, which has been emphasized by Rosselló et al. (2020). Therefore, to respond to multiple natural disasters, destination countries should not only focus on a single natural disaster, but they should also pay close attention to the accumulative impact of multiple natural disasters on inbound tourist flows. Regarding this point, the severity and frequency of natural disasters may be two important attributes that can be used to measure accumulative natural disasters. However, few studies have explored the impacts of these two attributes on inbound tourist flows simultaneously. The existing literature mainly focuses on the effect of the severity of a single natural disaster (Okumus, Altinay, & Arasli, 2005; Reddy, 2005; Yang, Wang, & Chen, 2011), and the impact of the accumulative severity of natural disasters in the same year has not received sufficient investigation. Therefore, to achieve the sustainable development of inbound tourism for destinations and to expand the current knowledge on the impacts of the attributes of natural disasters (Orchiston, 2012; Shakeela & Becken, 2015), this study explores the synergistic effect of the frequency and severity of natural disasters on inbound tourist flows from the annual perspective.

The existing literature mainly concentrates on the impacts of the single widely known natural disasters, such as the Nepal earthquakes (Ghimire, 2015), the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic (Min, Lim, & Kung, 2010), or COVID-19 (Gössling, Scott, & Hall, 2020). Natural disasters have mainly been investigated about the relationship between their severity and the damage they cause to the tourism industry (Floyd, Gibson, Pennington-Gray, & Thapa, 2004; Ghimire, 2015; Law, 2001; Okumus et al., 2005; Reddy, 2005; Senbeto & Hon, 2020; Yang et al., 2011). Large-scale disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, drew attention from the public because they generated extensive numbers of deaths, severe damage to property and buildings, and disruption of the order for the affected areas (Bilham, 2010; DesRoches, Comerio, Eberhard, Mooney, & Rix, 2011; Neumayer & Barthel, 2011; Prideaux, Laws, & Faulkner, 2007; Wang, 2009; Yin & Li, 2001). Even though the negative impacts of the severity of natural disasters have been extensively verified, recent literature has argued that natural disasters may generate some positive factors for tourism development in affected regions (Huang, Yin, Yang, Luo, & Huang, 2020; Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009; Walters et al., 2015), and the argument needs further testing in different scenarios (e.g., where natural disasters frequently occur).

Disaster frequency is as important as severity when understanding the impacts of natural disasters on inbound tourism, but it is largely ignored in post-disaster tourism research. The findings of the impacts of the frequency of man-made disasters are controversial. Pizam and Fleischer (2002) found that the frequency of terrorism events resulted in a greater negative influence on the number of inbound tourists while Omer and Yesiltas (2020) argued that disaster frequency did not have a significant influence on tourism. Generally, previous studies came to a controversial conclusion regarding the relationship between disasters and tourist arrivals from the perspective of a single event. The argument of the effect of disaster frequency on inbound tourist flows should be further tested in the context of multiple natural disasters.

For further exploration, this study quantifies disaster frequency and severity to model the synergistic effect of natural disasters on inbound tourist flows. In this study, we follow the method of Rosselló et al. (2020) in adopting the definition of a natural disaster by CRED, which includes six groups of hazards, namely, geophysical hazards, meteorological hazards, hydrological hazards, climatological hazards, biological hazards, and extraterrestrial hazards. We integrate the global datasets of natural disasters and bilateral international tourist flows from 177 countries from 1995 to 2018, including 9892 and 258,401 instances, respectively. A panel regression is conducted to examine the relationships, and the results are rigorously examined using several robustness tests.

Section snippets

Natural disasters in tourism

Natural disasters have a great impact on tourism. Many studies have demonstrated that natural disasters hinder the development of tourism (Ghobarah, Saatcioglu, & Nistor, 2006; Parajuli & Haynes, 2016; Shaw, Saayman, & Saayman, 2012) while several recent studies have stated that natural disasters may have positive effects (Biran, Liu, Li, & Eichhorn, 2014; Zhang, Qu, & Tavitiyaman, 2009). As far as we know, these conclusions were mainly based on the analysis of a single disaster. During the

Model

Following Saha, Su, and Campbell (2016), this paper adopts the panel data technique to examine the synergistic effect of the frequency and severity of natural disasters on inbound tourist flows from the annual perspective. The yearly data on the severity and frequency of natural disasters and numbers of inbound tourists are typical panel data, and they are suitable for panel data analysis (Rosselló et al., 2020; Wooldridge, 2005). With panel data analysis, an increase in the degrees of freedom

Empirical results

Table 3 shows observable variable characteristics and estimator performance. For inbound tourists, the maximum number of international arrivals is 0.107 billion, the minimum number is 181, and the median is 0.366 million. For annual disaster frequency, the minimum number is 0, the maximum number is 43, and the mean is 1.9. For the severity of natural disasters, the number of deaths ranges from 0 to 0.224 million, with an average fatality rate of 302. The damage of natural disasters ranges from

Robustness check

Several robustness checks are performed, and the results are presented in Table 5. We first substitute deaths caused by disasters with the total damage in US$ (TD) (model 6) to measure the impact of the severity of natural disasters. The estimation indicates that the coefficient of TD is negatively significant, indicating a stable result of our previous examination.

Next, we treat the independent variables using one-period lags with a fixed-effect model (model 7) since the time of a disaster's

Conclusion

It is noteworthy to mention an upward trend in the number of natural disasters (Becken et al., 2014; Rosselló et al., 2020). Natural disasters can have widespread influences on tourism, especially on inbound tourist flows in affected areas. Previous researches have mainly focused on the effects of disaster severity without considering the synergistic effect of the frequency and severity of natural disasters from an annual perspective. To enhance the current knowledge, a panel regression with

Funding sources

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant number 71925003]; Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of the Ministry of Education in China [Grant number 17YJA630031]; Innovation Spark Project of Sichuan University [Grant number 2018hhf- 37]; Scientific Research Project for Talent Introduction of Sichuan University [Grant number 20822041A4222].

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tian Lan: Methodology, Writing - original draft. Yang Yang: Conceptualization, Investigation. Yuhong Shao: Data curation, Validation. Mingzhi Luo: Supervision, Validation. Fangyu Zhong: Resources, Validation.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Tian Lan is a doctoral candidate in the School of Business, Sichuan University, China. His research interests center on tourism marketing, marketing strategies, big data marketing, on-line marketing and consumer behavior.

References (94)

  • P.W. Hystad et al.

    Towards a destination tourism disaster management framework: Long-term lessons from a forest fire disaster

    Tourism Management

    (2008)
  • A. Lepp et al.

    Tourist roles, perceived risk and international tourism

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (2003)
  • C.A. Martin et al.

    Substitute prices in models of tourism demand

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (1988)
  • M. Mazzocchi et al.

    Earthquake effects on tourism in central Italy

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (2001)
  • M. Mcaleer et al.

    An econometric analysis of SARS and Avian Flu on international tourist arrivals to Asia

    Environmental Modelling and Software

    (2010)
  • S. Nenonen et al.

    Don't adapt, shape! Use the crisis to shape your minimum viable system–And the wider market

    Industrial Marketing Management

    (2020)
  • E. Neumayer et al.

    Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: A global analysis

    Global Environmental Change

    (2011)
  • F. Okumus et al.

    The impact of Turkey's economic crisis of February 2001 on the tourism industry in Northern Cyprus

    Tourism Management

    (2005)
  • B.N. Rittichainuwat et al.

    Perceived travel risks regarding terrorism and disease: The case of Thailand

    Tourism Management

    (2009)
  • J. Rosselló et al.

    The effects of natural disasters on international tourism: A global analysis

    Tourism Management

    (2020)
  • N. Seetaram et al.

    Measuring price elasticities of demand for outbound tourism using competitiveness indices

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (2016)
  • J.H. Seo et al.

    The analysis of the relationships of Korean outbound tourism demand: Jeju Island and three international destinations

    Tourism Management

    (2009)
  • S.F. Sönmez

    Tourism, terrorism, and political instability

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (1998)
  • C.-H. Tsai et al.

    The establishment of a rapid natural disaster risk assessment model for the tourism industry

    Tourism Management

    (2011)
  • G. Walters et al.

    Sensationalist media reporting of disastrous events: Implications for tourism

    Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management

    (2016)
  • Y.-S. Wang

    The impact of crisis events and macroeconomic activity on Taiwan's international inbound tourism demand

    Tourism Management

    (2009)
  • S. Wearing et al.

    Engaging volunteer tourism in post-disaster recovery in Nepal

    Annals of Tourism Research

    (2020)
  • S. Wearing et al.

    Volunteer tourism: A review

    Tourism Management

    (2013)
  • C.S. Witham

    Volcanic disasters and incidents: A new database

    Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research

    (2005)
  • B.-J. Yan et al.

    Investigating the motivation–experience relationship in a dark tourism space: A case study of the Beichuan earthquake relics, China

    Tourism Management

    (2016)
  • W. Yang et al.

    Reconstruction strategies after the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, China

    Tourism Management

    (2011)
  • H. Yin et al.

    Human impact on floods and flood disasters on the Yangtze River

    Geomorphology

    (2001)
  • E. Backer et al.

    VFR travel: A viable market for tourism crisis and disaster recovery?

    International Journal of Tourism Research

    (2017)
  • F. Balli et al.

    Towards understanding GCC outbound international tourism

    Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure Events

    (2019)
  • B.H. Baltagi

    Econometric analysis of panel data

    (2008)
  • C. Bassil et al.

    Terrorism and tourism demand: A case study of Lebanon, Turkey and Israel

    Current Issues in Tourism

    (2019)
  • S. Becken et al.

    The tourism disaster vulnerability framework: An application to tourism in small island destinations

    Natural Hazards

    (2014)
  • J. Berger et al.

    Positive effects of negative publicity: When negative reviews increase sales

    Marketing Science

    (2010)
  • A. Bhati et al.

    National disaster management in the ASEAN-5: An analysis of tourism resilience

    Tourism Review

    (2016)
  • R. Bilham

    Lessons from the Haiti earthquake

    Nature

    (2010)
  • L. Brandes et al.

    Death-related publicity as informational advertising: Evidence from the music industry

    Marketing Letters

    (2016)
  • Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters

    CRED Crunch 58 – Disaster year in review (2019)

  • C.R. Chiou et al.

    Assessing impact of natural disasters on tourist arrivals: The case of Xitou nature education area (XNEA), Taiwan

    International Journal of Tourism Sciences

    (2013)
  • R. DesRoches et al.

    Overview of the 2010 Haiti earthquake

    Earthquake Spectra

    (2011)
  • G.R. Dowling et al.

    A model of perceived risk and intended risk-handling activity

    Journal of Consumer Research

    (1994)
  • L. Dwyer et al.

    Modeling the impact of Australia’s mining boom on tourism: A classic case of Dutch disease

    Journal of Travel Research

    (2016)
  • T. Eisensee et al.

    News droughts, news floods, and US disaster relief

    The Quarterly Journal of Economics

    (2007)
  • Tian Lan is a doctoral candidate in the School of Business, Sichuan University, China. His research interests center on tourism marketing, marketing strategies, big data marketing, on-line marketing and consumer behavior.

    Yang Yang is an associate professor in the College of History and Culture (Tourism), Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. His research interests include tourism marketing, consumer behavior in tourism and destination marketing.

    Yuhong Shao is a doctoral candidate in the College of History and Culture (Tourism), Sichuan University, P.R. China. Her research interests include outbound tourism, tourism employment and tourism economics.

    Mingzhi Luo is a lecturer in the College of History and Culture (Tourism), Sichuan University, China. His research interest includes tourism economics and tourism policy. He is currently working on tourism recovery affected by natural disasters.

    Fangyu Zhong is a postgraduate student in the College of History and Culture (Tourism), Sichuan University, China. Her research interests include tourism management and sustainable tourism.

    View full text