The Impact of Disasters on Japan’s Inbound Tourism Demand

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of disasters on international tourism demand for Japan by applying Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) intervention models that focus on evaluating change patterns and the duration of effects by observing variations in parameters. Japan suffered a variety of disasters, especially natural disasters due to its geographical location, so we have divided these disasters into three types: geological disasters, extreme weather events and “others” such as terrorist attacks, infectious diseases, and economic crises. Based on the principle of preparing for the worst, we selected 4 cases for each disaster type, for 12 in all. Results suggest that (1) large-scale disasters such as great earthquakes impacted negatively on inbound tourism demand for Japan; (2) not all disasters resulted in an abrupt drop in inbound tourist arrivals, extreme weather events, for example, did not decrease inbound tourism demand significantly; (3) impact caused by disasters was temporary.