The Impact of ETA’s Dissolution on Domestic Tourism in Spain

Abstract

In late 2011, the Spanish terrorist organization ETA announced the end of armed violence after more than forty years of illegal activity. While the existing literature has already established the negative impact of terrorist actions on international tourism in a particular region, this paper aims to determine whether ETA's final ceasefire and definitive dissolution had a positive impact on domestic tourism in Basque Country. To that end, a directed gravity model is estimated over a panel data-set of 699 domestic tourist flows between the Spanish regions from 2008 to 2013. Results suggest that the negative impact on visitor flows was localized in the Basque Country. Also, regardless of a permanent ceasefire announced in 2010, only the 2011 'definitive cessation of violence' had an immediate significant impact on the number of visitors to the Basque Country. These results complement the scarce literature on post-conflict tourism analysis and may have implications for regional authorities in affected regions in their efforts to rebuild their destination brands.

Flux and permanence of risk perceptions: Tourists' perception of the relative and absolute risk for various destinations

“…This finding points to some interesting insights that can only be gained by employing (quasi) experimental studies. Repeated measures are required and it is necessary to look at more than one destination a time (Voltes‐Dorta et al ., ). Looking at individual destinations over the years may easily lead to the conclusion that risk perceptions and therefore the number of visiting tourists to each destination fluctuate because of the occurrence of different dramatic events.…”

“…Volters‐Dorta et al . () point towards the need for such studies, and the present findings highlight their importance. This is because insights gained from the present findings diverge from what would have been concluded from looking at one destinations at a time.…”

“…This has in many cases shown that the number of visiting tourists declines somewhat after terrorist attacks, for example in Spain (Enders & Sandler, ), Northern Ireland (Pizam, ), Egypt (Wahab, ), China (Gartner & Shen ) and the USA (Lepp & Gibson, ). Some have also focused on the analysis of post conflict statistics, like for example Boyd () who observed increasing numbers of visitors to Northern Ireland during the IRA's ceasefire periods, and Voltes‐Dorta, Jiménes and Suárez‐Alemán () who reported a positive effect of the ETA's dissolution on the number of domestic tourists to the Basque Country.…”

“…As Voltes‐Dorta et al . () have pointed out; there is a scarcity of studies that look at more than one destination at a time. Comparing the relative risk of one destination to the other, and investigating whether the riskiness of one destination changes relative to another over time, may hold new information that cannot be gained from looking at one destination only.…”

A Taxonomy of Terror - About the Effect of Different Kinds of Terror on Risk Perceptions

“…However, reviewing 36 peer-reviewed studies on the effect of terrorism on tourism, Voltes-Dorta, Jiménez, and Suárez-Alemán (2015) concluded that the reported study by Wolff and Larsen (2014) was the only one that did not reach the expected conclusion that terrorism had a negative effect on tourism. Seemingly, the 22nd of July attacks studied by Wolff and Larsen (2014) have some characteristics that are not shared by most of the terror attacks reported in the literature, which may be the reason why risk perceptions decreased in this particular case, but not in the other cases.…”