Tourists' Perceptions of Security: The Risk—Fear Paradox

Abstract

Considerable attention has been paid within tourism management and the tourism academic community to tourists' fear of crime and disorder. However, with few exceptions, this attention has focused predominantly on the impact of high-profile crimes and terrorist incidents on choice of destination. Moreover, although, again, there is an established tradition of interviewing residents of tourist locations about their perceptions of the (negative) impacts of tourism, little emphasis has been placed on asking tourists themselves. The research discussed in this paper attempted to fill these two voids by deploying a victim survey with a national sample of British people, focusing on their last holiday. The findings confirm the high victimization rates experienced by tourists. However, although many people took notions of safety into account in choosing a holiday area or country, few saw crime or disorder as a problem when they subsequently went on holiday. These findings are explored in the context of the risk–fear paradox that is acknowledged in the victimological literature. But, while in that context the paradox is that fear exceeds risk, in the case of tourism and crime it appears that risk exceeds fear. The results underline the importance of crime prevention and community safety as policy priorities.