Building a system dynamics model to analyze scenarios of COVID-19 policymaking in tourism-dependent developing countries: A case study of Cambodia

Abstract

To control the COVID-19 pandemic, various policies have been implemented to restrict the mobility of people. Such policies, however, have resulted in huge damages to many economic sectors, especially the tourism sector and its auxiliary services. Focusing on Cambodia, this study presents a system dynamics (SD) model for assessing and selecting effective policy responses to contain the spread of COVID-19, while maintaining tourism development. Policies targeted in this study include international and domestic transportation bans, quarantine policy, tourist-centered protection measures, and enterprise-led protection measures. Two types of scenario analyses are conducted: one targets each policy separately and the other combines different policies. Among all scenarios, quarantine policy is evaluated to be the most effective policy as it balances the containment of the spread of COVID-19 and support for tourism development. This study provides a new way of guiding COVID-19 policymaking and exploring effective policies in the context of tourism.

Tourism and COVID-19: An economy-wide assessment

“…Existing system-wide assessments with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic revolve around its impacts ( Pham et al, 2021 ), and the impacts of prevention and control strategies of the pandemic ( Li et al, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). Notably, literature is yet to pay enough attention to tourism-related recovery strategies, including domestic tourism promotion that can enhance the adaptive capacity of tourism economies.…”

System Dynamics Modeling for Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Supply Chains: A Case Study of Kenya and Rwanda

“…System dynamics is a suitable approach for estimating the impacts of COVID-19 on food and nutritional security in Eastern African countries because it considers the complexity of the food production web, consumption, and distribution with the feedback structure from both the COVID-19 contagion component and the health component [23][24][25]. Several studies have used this approach to evaluate various aspects of COVID-19 impacts [26][27][28][29][30], but none have designed a system with relevant sub-systems, such as the pandemic, the country population dynamics, and movement, with components of health care capacity and food security to thoroughly analyze feedback loops of the whole system and determine the impacts on the food supply chain at country level. For instance, using the system dynamics modeling approach, Li et al [26] analyzed scenarios of COVID-19 policy making in tourismdependent countries, focusing on the pandemic and financial support through tourism components.…”

“…Several studies have used this approach to evaluate various aspects of COVID-19 impacts [26][27][28][29][30], but none have designed a system with relevant sub-systems, such as the pandemic, the country population dynamics, and movement, with components of health care capacity and food security to thoroughly analyze feedback loops of the whole system and determine the impacts on the food supply chain at country level. For instance, using the system dynamics modeling approach, Li et al [26] analyzed scenarios of COVID-19 policy making in tourismdependent countries, focusing on the pandemic and financial support through tourism components. Kozlovskyi et al [27] studied the effect of COVID-19 on labor migrants and economic growth in The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, and they combined only epidemiological and economic growth sub-systems.…”

Coastal Tourism Recovery amid COVID-19: Insights from a Participatory System Dynamics Approach

“…More specifically, participatory SDM was proven suitable in tourism planning as discussed in [32][33][34], with several applications addressing challenges in coastal tourism destinations (e.g., [35][36][37][38][39]). In conjunction, studies have been applied to explore tourism re-opening and recovery strategies amid COVID-19 [40,41], with focussed SDM applications on the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism and travel as reported in [16,42,43]. A participatory system dynamics approach is therefore suitable for addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism due to its ability to incorporate multiple stakeholder perspectives, evaluate changing behavior and test policies to support effective recovery plans.…”