Disaster Planning Intentions of Tourism Accommodation Managers: Understanding the Influence of Past Disaster Experience and Disaster Management Training

Abstract

Tourism is one of the most vulnerable industries to disasters, and empirical studies on disaster preparedness have been surprisingly sparse. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this study sheds light on the unexplored mediating role of strategic decision-makers’ (SDMs) disaster cognition along with their attitude to explicate how and why learning influences disaster planning. Hypotheses were tested using two-phase survey data collected from 301 SDMs of Sri Lankan accommodation establishments. Clarifying previous inconsistent findings regarding the role of learning, this study demonstrated that training and past disaster experience indirectly influenced SDMs’ planning intentions via their disaster cognition and attitude toward disaster planning. In this regard, past experience was found to regulate the relationship of training with both cognition and attitude, implying that disaster training programs may be more influential for encouraging disaster planning intentions of lesser experienced SDMs by stimulating their disaster cognition and attitude.