Can International Students’ Risk Perception and Place Image Create an Advantage in Safeguarding Place Loyalty in Post-COVID-19 Tourism?

Abstract

International students enrolled in the long term are considered habitual residents. They act as hosts to their friends and relatives, generating word-of-mouth recommendations and revisiting the host country. In order to facilitate inbound tourism in post-COVID-19 tourism, it is necessary to understand their risk perception, place image, and loyalty and provide meaningful insights for tourism markets. This study explores how social and personal risk perception of COVID-19 and cognitive and affective place image explain place loyalty. International students for degree programs comprised the sample population for this study. Findings revealed that social risk perception negatively shapes cognitive and affective place image, while personal risk perception only explains affective place image. Both cognitive and affective place image significantly affects place loyalty and mediates between social risk perception and place loyalty. The research provides new evidence on the risk perception of COVID-19, showing that internal factors such as social and personal risk perception may cause somewhat different results contrary to previous studies. Although gender moderates the relationship between cognitive place image and loyalty, the influence of gender on the theoretical and empirical relationships between risk perception, place image, and loyalty is not significant for international students. Implications for theory and practice, limitations, and future studies are discussed.

Loyalty in the time of COVID-19: A review of the literature in tourism destination settings

“…Interestingly, a moderation through multi-group analysis (MGA) comparing COVID-19 vaccination status (vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated) yielded a greater, positive effect of attractiveness on loyalty in tourists who had been vaccinated. The study by Lee and Kim (2022) demonstrated the impact of cognitive place image (β = 0.170) and affective place image (β = 0.535) as immediate antecedents of destination loyalty. In the same model, the authors found cognitive place image predicted by social risks of COVID-19 (β = −0.135) and personal risks of COVID-19 (β = 0.140), while the affective place image was determined by social risks perceptions of COVID-19 (β = −0.119) through the assessment of mediation effects.…”

“…While some of the articles studied destination loyalty drawing from existing models in the marketing and tourism literature framed within the context of COVID-19 impacts, others works hypothesized moderation and/or mediation effects with new constructs specifically relevant to the pandemic disruptions (e.g., Han et al, 2021 ; Hassan and Soliman, 2021 ; Rather, 2021 ; Cambra-Fierro et al, 2022 ; Lee and Kim, 2022 ; Manchanda and Deb, 2022 ; Nie et al, 2022 ; Papadopoulou et al, 2022 ). The overall results from the reviewed models show the substantial impact that some drivers continue to have on loyalty, as exhibited by the effects from destination satisfaction (β = 0.790) by Papadopoulou et al (2022) and (β = 0.688) by Chebli et al (2021) , perceived quality (β = 0.660) by Cambra-Fierro et al (2022) , engagement (β = 0.630) by Rather (2021) , or destination image (β = 0.530) by Zaman et al (2021) .…”

“…The review of journal articles found that only one of the examined models specified cognitive and affective dimensions as drivers of destination loyalty ( Lee and Kim, 2022 ). Hence, future studies may assess the impact of health and safety risks on consumer loyalty encompassing other constructs along the cognitive-affective routes in the formation of CBBE ( Keller, 2016 ) in the context of tourism destinations ( Tasci, 2021 ).…”