Submitted:
20 October 2020
Posted:
21 October 2020
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Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
Abstract
Understanding tourist behaviour during and after major tourism crises is essential to help destinations recover. The COVID-19 pandemic, a period of uncertainty and risk, makes it relevant to assess factors that influence travel intentions. There has been little research on tourist behaviour during health crises and, in particular, on perceived health risk and uncertainty effects on travel intentions. This study was carried out during the first months of the pandemic in Brazil and aims to investigate the role of health risk perception and intolerance of uncertainty on travel intentions for 2020 and 2021. We applied an online survey to 1,150 Brazilian participants from March to May of 2020. Our findings indicate that perceived COVID-19 severity, perceived probability of contracting it, and expected pandemic duration are significant predictors of travel intentions for both years. This paper sheds new light on tourist behaviour in the context of global health crises.
Keywords:
COVID-19
; pandemic
; travel intentions
; health risk perception
; intolerance of uncertainty
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.