The Psychological Consequences of COVID-19 Pandemic in Tourism Sector: A Systematic Review
Abstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic-induced changes have threatened the psychological wellbeing of travelling. This review aims to appraise a range of perceived psychological variables used to realize how the pandemic has influenced tourist behavior.
Methods: A systematic review was conducted to identify the mechanisms behind tourists' behavioral change during the pandemic. The papers were extracted from four databases: PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science, and EMBASE, published since 2020 to 2021. The results are summarized narratively due to the heterogeneity of the studies.
Results: A total of 369 citations were identified through an electronic search of databases, of which nine publications met the inclusion criteria. The extracted information determines the significant factors contributing to the psychological changes of travelling behavior during the pandemic.
Conclusion: The tourists' perception of COVID-19 has influenced the intentions and motivation in the tourism sector and has changed travel behavior. The mental health outcome of travelling has been replaced by globally recognized fear and anxiety. Yet, there are several motivators to travel during the pandemic. At the same time, the socio-demographic characteristics contribute to all the identified changes.
1 Chang CL, McAleer M, Ramos V (2020). The future of tourism in the COVID-19 era. Advances in Decision Sciences, 24 (3).
2 Zenker S, Braun E, Gyimóthy S (2021). Too afraid to Travel? Development of a pan-demic (COVID-19) anxiety travel scale (PATS). Tour Manag. 84:1042-86.
3 Chua BL, Al-Ansi A, Lee MJ, Han H (2021). Impact of health risk perception on avoidance of international travel in the wake of a pandemic. Current Issues in Tour-ism, 24(7):985-1002.
4 Ahorsu DK, Lin CY, Imani V, Saffari M, Griffiths MD, Pakpour AH (2020). The fear of COVID-19 scale: development and initial validation. Int J Ment Health Ad-dict, 27:1-9.
5 Lee SA (2020). Coronavirus Anxiety Scale: A brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety. Death Stud, 44(7):393-401.
6 Anser MK, Sharif M, Khan MA, Nassani AA, Zaman K, Abro MM, Kabbani A (2021). Demographic, psychological, and environmental factors affecting student’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic: on the rocks. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 19:1-11.
7 Aebli A, Volgger M, Taplin R (2021). A two-dimensional approach to travel motiva-tion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Issues in Tourism. 29:1-6.
8 Xie J, Luo S, Furuya K, Sun D (2020). Ur-ban parks as green buffers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainability. 12(17):6751.
9 Buckley R (2020). Nature tourism and men-tal health: Parks, happiness, and causa-tion. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 28 (9):1409-24.
10 Hanna P, Wijesinghe S, Paliatsos I, Walker C, Adams M, Kimbu A (2019). Active engagement with nature: outdoor adven-ture tourism, sustainability and wellbeing. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27 (9): 1355-73.
11 Buckley R, Westaway D (2020). Mental health rescue effects of women's outdoor tourism: A role in COVID-19 recovery. Ann Tour Res, 85:103041.
12 Han H, Al-Ansi A, Koseoglu MA, Lin PM, Park J, Yu J, Kim W (2019). Halal tour-ism: travel motivators and customer re-tention. Journal of Travel & Tourism Market-ing, 36(9):1012-24.
13 Cooper MA, Buckley R (2021). Tourist men-tal health drives destination choice, mar-keting, and matching. J Travel Res, 00472875211011548. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875211011548.
14 Xiang YT, Yang Y, Li W, Zhang L, Zhang Q, Cheung T, Ng CH (2020). Timely mental health care for the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is urgently needed. Lancet Psychiatry, 7 (3):228-9.
15 Asmundson GJG, Taylor S (2020). Corona-phobia: Fear and the 2019-nCoV out-break. J Anxiety Disord, 70: 102196. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102196.
16 Taylor S (2019). The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of In-fectious Disease. Cambridge Scholars Pub-lishing: Newcastle. UK.
17 Frijda, N.H (1986). The Emotions. Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA.
18 Plutchik R, Kellerman H (2013). (Eds.) Theo-ries of Emotion (Vol. 1); Academic Press: New York, NY, USA.
19 Su Z, McDonnell D, Wen J, Kozak M, Ab-bas J, Šegalo S, Li X, Ahmad J, Chesh-mehzangi A, Cai Y, Yang L (2021). Men-tal health consequences of COVID-19 media coverage: the need for effective crisis communication practices. Global Health, 17(1):1-8.
20 Chen CC, Lin YH, Petrick JF (2013). Social biases of destination perceptions. J Travel Res, 52(2), 240–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287512459106
21 Rezaei M, Kim D, Alizadeh A, Rokni L (2021). Evaluating the Mental-Health Pos-itive Impacts of Agritourism; A Case Study from South Korea. Sustainability, 13(16):8712. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168712.
22 Neal JD, Uysal M, Sirgy MJ. (2007). The ef-fect of tourism services on travelers’ qual-ity of life. J Travel Res, 46(2), 154–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287507303977.
23 Sirgy MJ, Kruger PS, Lee DJ, Yu GB (2011). How does a travel trip affect tourists’ life satisfaction? J Travel Res, 50(3), 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287510362784.
24 de Bloom J, Geurts SA, Sonnentag S, Taris T, de Weerth C, Kompier, MA. (2011). How does a vacation from work affect employee health and well-being? Psychology & Health, 26(12), 1606–1622. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2010.546860
25 de Bloom J, Nawijn J, Geurts S, Kinnunen U, Korpela K. (2017). Holiday travel, staycations, and subjective well-being. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(4), 573–588. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1229323
26 Richards G. (1999). Vacations and the quali-ty of life: Patterns and structures. J Bus Res, 44(3), 189–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-2963(97)00200-2
27 Luo JM, Lam CF (2020). Travel anxiety, risk attitude and travel intentions towards “travel bubble” destinations in Hong Kong: Effect of the fear of COVID-19. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 17(21):7859.
28 Wang IM., Ackerman JM. (2019). The infec-tiousness of crowds: Crowding experi-ences are amplified by pathogen threats. Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 45(1), 120–132.
29 Faulkner J, Schaller M, Park JH., & Duncan, L. A. (2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xeno-phobic attitudes. Group Processes & Inter-group Relations, 7(4), 333–353.
30 Ritchie BW, Jiang Y. (2019). A review of re-search on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster manage-ment. Ann Tour Res. 79: 102812.
31 Gnoth J (1997). Tourism motivation and expectation formation. Ann Tour Res, 24(2), 283–304. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0160-7383(97)80002-3
32 Tatem AJ (2014). Mapping population and pathogen movements. Int Health, 6, 5–11.
33 Joo H, Henry RE., Lee YK., Berro A, Mask-ery BA (2019). The effects of past SARS experience and proximity on declines in numbers of travelers to the Republic of Korea during the 2015 MERS outbreak: A retrospective study. Travel Med Infect Dis, 30, 54–66.
34 Yang F, Wong IA (2021) The social crisis af-termath: tourist well-being during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29:6, 859-878.
35 UNWTO (2021). 2020: Worst year in tour-ism history with 1 billion fewer interna-tional arrivals. UNWTO. Retrieved Janu-ary, 2021, from https://www.unwto.org/news/2020-worst-year-in-tourism-history-with-1-billion-fewer-internationalarrivals
36 Gursoy D, Chi CG. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on hospitality in-dustry: Review of the current situations and a research agenda. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management. 29(5), 527–529.
37 Hosseini S, Bahrevar V, Rahmanian V (2020). Fear of COVID 19 Pandemic: A case study in Iran. Pakistan Journal of Medi-cal and Health Sciences, 14(2).
38 Slovic P (2000). (Ed.) Risk, society, and poli-cy series. In: The Perception of Risk; Earthscan Publications: New York, NY, USA.
39 Zenker S, Kock F (2020). The coronavirus pandemic – a critical discussion of a tour-ism research agenda. Tourism Management, 81, 104164.
40 Zambianchi M (2020). The Collective Trau-matic Event of COVID-19 Pandemic and its Psychological Impact on Beliefs and Intentions of Senior Italian Tourists. Almatourism-Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development. 11(22):45-60.
41 Das SS, Tiwari AK (2021). Understanding international and domestic travel inten-tion of Indian travellers during COVID-19 using a Bayesian approach. Tourism Recreation Research, 46(2): 228-244., DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2020.1830341.
42 So YB, Chang PJ (2021). The effect of coronavirus disease-19= (COVID-19) risk perception on behavioral intention towards ‘untact’ tourism in South Korea during the first wave of the pandemic (March 2020). Current Issues in Tourism, 24:7, 1017-1035, DOI:10.1080/13683500.2020.1798895
43 Sandra M. Sánchez-Cañizares L. Javier Cab-eza-Ramírez, Guzmán Muñoz-Fernández & Fernando J. Fuentes-García (2021). Impact of the perceived risk from Covid-19 on intention to travel. Current Issues in Tourism, 24:7, 970-984, DOI:10.1080/13683500.2020.1829571
44 Kim N. (2017). Trend Korea 2018. Mirae-book Publishing.
45 Lee SM., LeeD. (2020). “Untact”: A new customer service strategy in the digital age. Service Business, 14(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-019-00408-2
46 Reisinger Y, Mavondo, F (2005). Travel anx-iety and intentions to travel international-ly: Implications of travel risk perception. J Travel Res. 43, 2122–2125.
47 Williams AM., Baláž V. (2015). Tourism risk and uncertainty: Theoretical reflections. J Travel Res. 54(3), 271–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287514523334
48 Matiza T (2020). Post-COVID-19 crisis travel behaviour: Towards mitigating the effects of perceived risk. Journal of Tourism Futures. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-04-2020-0063
49 Ahmad A., Jamaludin A, Zuraimi NSM, Va-leri M (2020). Visit intention and destina-tion image in post-covid-19 crisis recov-ery. Current Issues in Tourism, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2020.1842342
50 Reuters. Baltics Open Europe’s First Pan-demic ‘Travel Bubble’ as Curbs Ease. 2020. Available online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-baltic/baltics-open-europes-firstpandemic- travel-bubble-as-curbs-ease-idUSKBN22Q3KM (accessed on March 2021).
51 Hoque AA, Shikha FAA, Hasanat MWW, Arif II, Hamid ABA (2020). The effect of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the tourism industry in China. Asian J. Multidiscip. Stud. 3, 525–528.
52 Li Y, Song H, Guo R (2021). A Study on the Causal Process of Virtual Reality Tourism and Its Attributes in terms of Their Ef-fects on Subjective Well-Being during COVID-19. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 18(3):1019.
2 Zenker S, Braun E, Gyimóthy S (2021). Too afraid to Travel? Development of a pan-demic (COVID-19) anxiety travel scale (PATS). Tour Manag. 84:1042-86.
3 Chua BL, Al-Ansi A, Lee MJ, Han H (2021). Impact of health risk perception on avoidance of international travel in the wake of a pandemic. Current Issues in Tour-ism, 24(7):985-1002.
4 Ahorsu DK, Lin CY, Imani V, Saffari M, Griffiths MD, Pakpour AH (2020). The fear of COVID-19 scale: development and initial validation. Int J Ment Health Ad-dict, 27:1-9.
5 Lee SA (2020). Coronavirus Anxiety Scale: A brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety. Death Stud, 44(7):393-401.
6 Anser MK, Sharif M, Khan MA, Nassani AA, Zaman K, Abro MM, Kabbani A (2021). Demographic, psychological, and environmental factors affecting student’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic: on the rocks. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 19:1-11.
7 Aebli A, Volgger M, Taplin R (2021). A two-dimensional approach to travel motiva-tion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Issues in Tourism. 29:1-6.
8 Xie J, Luo S, Furuya K, Sun D (2020). Ur-ban parks as green buffers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainability. 12(17):6751.
9 Buckley R (2020). Nature tourism and men-tal health: Parks, happiness, and causa-tion. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 28 (9):1409-24.
10 Hanna P, Wijesinghe S, Paliatsos I, Walker C, Adams M, Kimbu A (2019). Active engagement with nature: outdoor adven-ture tourism, sustainability and wellbeing. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27 (9): 1355-73.
11 Buckley R, Westaway D (2020). Mental health rescue effects of women's outdoor tourism: A role in COVID-19 recovery. Ann Tour Res, 85:103041.
12 Han H, Al-Ansi A, Koseoglu MA, Lin PM, Park J, Yu J, Kim W (2019). Halal tour-ism: travel motivators and customer re-tention. Journal of Travel & Tourism Market-ing, 36(9):1012-24.
13 Cooper MA, Buckley R (2021). Tourist men-tal health drives destination choice, mar-keting, and matching. J Travel Res, 00472875211011548. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875211011548.
14 Xiang YT, Yang Y, Li W, Zhang L, Zhang Q, Cheung T, Ng CH (2020). Timely mental health care for the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is urgently needed. Lancet Psychiatry, 7 (3):228-9.
15 Asmundson GJG, Taylor S (2020). Corona-phobia: Fear and the 2019-nCoV out-break. J Anxiety Disord, 70: 102196. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102196.
16 Taylor S (2019). The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of In-fectious Disease. Cambridge Scholars Pub-lishing: Newcastle. UK.
17 Frijda, N.H (1986). The Emotions. Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA.
18 Plutchik R, Kellerman H (2013). (Eds.) Theo-ries of Emotion (Vol. 1); Academic Press: New York, NY, USA.
19 Su Z, McDonnell D, Wen J, Kozak M, Ab-bas J, Šegalo S, Li X, Ahmad J, Chesh-mehzangi A, Cai Y, Yang L (2021). Men-tal health consequences of COVID-19 media coverage: the need for effective crisis communication practices. Global Health, 17(1):1-8.
20 Chen CC, Lin YH, Petrick JF (2013). Social biases of destination perceptions. J Travel Res, 52(2), 240–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287512459106
21 Rezaei M, Kim D, Alizadeh A, Rokni L (2021). Evaluating the Mental-Health Pos-itive Impacts of Agritourism; A Case Study from South Korea. Sustainability, 13(16):8712. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168712.
22 Neal JD, Uysal M, Sirgy MJ. (2007). The ef-fect of tourism services on travelers’ qual-ity of life. J Travel Res, 46(2), 154–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287507303977.
23 Sirgy MJ, Kruger PS, Lee DJ, Yu GB (2011). How does a travel trip affect tourists’ life satisfaction? J Travel Res, 50(3), 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287510362784.
24 de Bloom J, Geurts SA, Sonnentag S, Taris T, de Weerth C, Kompier, MA. (2011). How does a vacation from work affect employee health and well-being? Psychology & Health, 26(12), 1606–1622. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2010.546860
25 de Bloom J, Nawijn J, Geurts S, Kinnunen U, Korpela K. (2017). Holiday travel, staycations, and subjective well-being. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(4), 573–588. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1229323
26 Richards G. (1999). Vacations and the quali-ty of life: Patterns and structures. J Bus Res, 44(3), 189–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-2963(97)00200-2
27 Luo JM, Lam CF (2020). Travel anxiety, risk attitude and travel intentions towards “travel bubble” destinations in Hong Kong: Effect of the fear of COVID-19. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 17(21):7859.
28 Wang IM., Ackerman JM. (2019). The infec-tiousness of crowds: Crowding experi-ences are amplified by pathogen threats. Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 45(1), 120–132.
29 Faulkner J, Schaller M, Park JH., & Duncan, L. A. (2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xeno-phobic attitudes. Group Processes & Inter-group Relations, 7(4), 333–353.
30 Ritchie BW, Jiang Y. (2019). A review of re-search on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster manage-ment. Ann Tour Res. 79: 102812.
31 Gnoth J (1997). Tourism motivation and expectation formation. Ann Tour Res, 24(2), 283–304. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0160-7383(97)80002-3
32 Tatem AJ (2014). Mapping population and pathogen movements. Int Health, 6, 5–11.
33 Joo H, Henry RE., Lee YK., Berro A, Mask-ery BA (2019). The effects of past SARS experience and proximity on declines in numbers of travelers to the Republic of Korea during the 2015 MERS outbreak: A retrospective study. Travel Med Infect Dis, 30, 54–66.
34 Yang F, Wong IA (2021) The social crisis af-termath: tourist well-being during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29:6, 859-878.
35 UNWTO (2021). 2020: Worst year in tour-ism history with 1 billion fewer interna-tional arrivals. UNWTO. Retrieved Janu-ary, 2021, from https://www.unwto.org/news/2020-worst-year-in-tourism-history-with-1-billion-fewer-internationalarrivals
36 Gursoy D, Chi CG. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on hospitality in-dustry: Review of the current situations and a research agenda. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management. 29(5), 527–529.
37 Hosseini S, Bahrevar V, Rahmanian V (2020). Fear of COVID 19 Pandemic: A case study in Iran. Pakistan Journal of Medi-cal and Health Sciences, 14(2).
38 Slovic P (2000). (Ed.) Risk, society, and poli-cy series. In: The Perception of Risk; Earthscan Publications: New York, NY, USA.
39 Zenker S, Kock F (2020). The coronavirus pandemic – a critical discussion of a tour-ism research agenda. Tourism Management, 81, 104164.
40 Zambianchi M (2020). The Collective Trau-matic Event of COVID-19 Pandemic and its Psychological Impact on Beliefs and Intentions of Senior Italian Tourists. Almatourism-Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development. 11(22):45-60.
41 Das SS, Tiwari AK (2021). Understanding international and domestic travel inten-tion of Indian travellers during COVID-19 using a Bayesian approach. Tourism Recreation Research, 46(2): 228-244., DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2020.1830341.
42 So YB, Chang PJ (2021). The effect of coronavirus disease-19= (COVID-19) risk perception on behavioral intention towards ‘untact’ tourism in South Korea during the first wave of the pandemic (March 2020). Current Issues in Tourism, 24:7, 1017-1035, DOI:10.1080/13683500.2020.1798895
43 Sandra M. Sánchez-Cañizares L. Javier Cab-eza-Ramírez, Guzmán Muñoz-Fernández & Fernando J. Fuentes-García (2021). Impact of the perceived risk from Covid-19 on intention to travel. Current Issues in Tourism, 24:7, 970-984, DOI:10.1080/13683500.2020.1829571
44 Kim N. (2017). Trend Korea 2018. Mirae-book Publishing.
45 Lee SM., LeeD. (2020). “Untact”: A new customer service strategy in the digital age. Service Business, 14(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-019-00408-2
46 Reisinger Y, Mavondo, F (2005). Travel anx-iety and intentions to travel international-ly: Implications of travel risk perception. J Travel Res. 43, 2122–2125.
47 Williams AM., Baláž V. (2015). Tourism risk and uncertainty: Theoretical reflections. J Travel Res. 54(3), 271–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287514523334
48 Matiza T (2020). Post-COVID-19 crisis travel behaviour: Towards mitigating the effects of perceived risk. Journal of Tourism Futures. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-04-2020-0063
49 Ahmad A., Jamaludin A, Zuraimi NSM, Va-leri M (2020). Visit intention and destina-tion image in post-covid-19 crisis recov-ery. Current Issues in Tourism, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2020.1842342
50 Reuters. Baltics Open Europe’s First Pan-demic ‘Travel Bubble’ as Curbs Ease. 2020. Available online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-baltic/baltics-open-europes-firstpandemic- travel-bubble-as-curbs-ease-idUSKBN22Q3KM (accessed on March 2021).
51 Hoque AA, Shikha FAA, Hasanat MWW, Arif II, Hamid ABA (2020). The effect of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the tourism industry in China. Asian J. Multidiscip. Stud. 3, 525–528.
52 Li Y, Song H, Guo R (2021). A Study on the Causal Process of Virtual Reality Tourism and Its Attributes in terms of Their Ef-fects on Subjective Well-Being during COVID-19. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 18(3):1019.
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 50 No 9 (2021) | |
| Section | Review Article(s) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.18502/ijph.v50i9.7045 | |
| Keywords | ||
| COVID-19 pandemic Psychological wellbeing; Mental wellbeing Tourism Travel | ||
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How to Cite
1.
Rokni L. The Psychological Consequences of COVID-19 Pandemic in Tourism Sector: A Systematic Review. Iran J Public Health. 2021;50(9):1743-1756.
