Tourist risk perception and objective risk
an analysis of countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
Keywords:
Risk perception, COVID-19 pandemic, Tourist behaviorAbstract
Perceptions of risk are not always in line with objective risk measures. According to the decision-making literature, this is due to affective evaluations laypeople do over hazards instead of a more deliberative judgement. Against this backdrop, this study investigates tourists’ perceptions of risk in relation to the most affected countries by COVID-19, and compare it to their objective risk measures. Our findings suggest that people think in accordance with the denominator neglect effect while assessing risk of contamination, that is, they consider the total number of infected people and disregard its proportion in relation to the population. Also, news media consumption was found to be associated with distinguishing low-risk of contamination countries, but not top risky ones. These results shed light on biases in people’s judgements that need to be taken into account by tourism managers, as the sector begins its recovery.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Marcelo de Oliveira Nunes, Verônica Feder Mayer, Luís Antônio da Rocha Dib
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