Contrasting the COVID-19 Effects on Tourism Safety Perceptions and Coping Behavior among Young People during Two Pandemic Waves: Evidence from Egypt

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on tourism safety perceptions, acceptance of restrictions, and the intention to change behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic among young people. Taking Egypt as a case study, a total of 386 respondents were surveyed in two different pandemic periods, with data being collected during the first wave, in April and May 2020, and during the second wave, in December 2020 and January 2021. Data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with multigroup analysis (MGA). Results reveal significant differences between the first and the second coronavirus waves regarding the effects of perceived risk. Findings point to the heightened potential of the youth market segment in the current context and suggest that youngsters’ adaptive coping responses evolved towards self-regulatory behavior. Based on the results, theoretical and practical implications are drawn. Conceptually, the study has contributed to the clarification of the desensitization process experienced by youth over time, in the post-pandemic tourism context. Additionally, the activities’ safety perceptions being examined per se enlightened the relationship between risk susceptibility, safety perceptions, and coping attitudes and behavior. Findings suggest that special attention should be paid to crowded group settings, such as youth events, advising that authorities and tourism services should target their communication to different population segments and use appropriate safety messaging according to the evolution of health crises.

A Projection Pursuit Dynamic Cluster Model for Tourism Safety Early Warning and Its Implications for Sustainable Tourism

“…Due to differences in culture, religion, and beliefs, conflicts between tourists and residents and between the tourists are prone to occur. The political stability, such as war and terrorism, crime, and epidemics, of the host country will all affect tourism security and thus interrupt the growth of tourism, as well as cause a downturn in the local travel and tourism economy [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In short, tourism safety threats and heavy casualties that happen to tourists have caused great harm and economic losses to the local government, travel organizers, tourists, and their families, directly threatening the healthy development of the tourism industry.…”

“…Ensuring tourism safety is thus an important guarantee and prerequisite for developing the tourism industry. Till now, many studies [19,21,23,26,27] paid more attention to tourism safety evaluation and early warning at home and abroad. Several studies [28][29][30][31][32] have further reviewed the advantages, applicability, and shortcomings of the analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy) comprehensive evaluation method, error backpropagation neural network (BPNN) model, and the models combining these methods with BPNN in detail, and have mainly discussed and analyzed the problems existing in the BPNN-combined models from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.…”