Impacts of Terrorist Events on Tourism Development: Evidence from Asia

Abstract

To examine terrorism impacts on international tourism industry in Asia, we collected data from 46 countries from 1995 to 2016, with a total of 1,012 samples. Our results showed that terrorism had a more consistent negative impact on international tourism revenue (ITR) than on international tourist arrivals. While the frequency of terrorism had a significant positive impact on ITR, when controlling for terrorist events which did not cause fatalities, such positive impact changed to negative. A further finding was that the Asian tourism market greatly developed following the 911 event, even though ITR decreased in Muslim countries with high risk of terrorist attacks. The current study makes a contribution to the understanding of terrorism features which may prove useful to strengthening antiterrorism policy in the tourism sector.