Last chance to travel or safety first? The influence of exposure to natural hazards and coping capacities on tourism consumption

Abstract

The literature shows that natural disasters adversely affect international (arrivals) tourism. However, there seems to have been a lack of consideration of the dynamics of domestic and outbound (departure) tourism consumption in respect of natural hazards. To address this gap, this study uses a unique dataset of exposure to natural hazards and coping capacities for a global sample of 145 economies from 2011 to 2019 to examine the influence on domestic, outbound and total tourism spending. Exposure appears to have inverted U-shaped relationships with domestic and total tourism spending, and a U-shaped relationship with outbound spending. Coping capacities, in contrast, have U-shaped relationships with domestic and total tourism spending, with an inverted U-shaped relationship with outbound spending. Lastly, the analyses for four income groups and seven regions show some heteroscedasticity. The findings suggest that governments should build coping capacities for the recovery of tourism after disaster events.

JEL codes: Z32, Z38, Q01, Q54