What drives willingness to travel in the context of COVID-19?—A measurement of eco-environmental values

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had tremendous impacts on human health and the world economy. Studies have focused on the impact of COVID-19 on potential tourists and tourism destinations from the perspectives of individuals, industries and organizations, and they have provided some measures for tourism recovery. However, under the situation of individual restriction, research has not systematically explained residents’ desire for trips of different distances and factors or the similarities and differences in the factors affecting tourism willingness for trips of different distances. In this context, a measurement of eco-environmental values is used to investigate these issues to help the tourism economy recover. Using online questionnaires covering all provinces in mainland China, this paper investigates residents’ travel willingness to make trips of different distances, and it utilizes binary logistic regression analysis to examine the factors that help predict tourists’ travel intentions. In addition, the patterns of willingness to travel different distances are displayed in maps generated by ArcGIS software. The results suggest that the objective COVID-19 confirmed case distribution follows distance decay theory; however, the distribution patterns of travel willingness are not in accordance with distance decay. The factors that have a significant impact on predicting travel willingness regarding the three kinds of trip distances are educational background, cognition of COVID-19, and geographical division factors. Income and the severity of the pandemic situation play different roles in predicting travel willingness in this study. Overall, the findings of this study extend the application of distance decay theory, which contributes to tourism studies in the COVID-19 context. The findings are also beneficial for tourism recovery and crisis management against the backdrop of pandemic normalization.