Impact of severe smog on travel demand of residents in tourist generating places: a case study of Beijing

ABSTRACT

China and some other countries have suffered from severe smog over the past few years. Impacts of smog pollution on tourism have received attention from the academic community. However, the majority of existing researches have been conducted from the angle of travel destination places. Little attention is paid to its impact on tourism from the perspective of tourist generating places. In this study, the authors, by employing Structure Equation Modelling and taking Beijing as the case, have examined severe smog’s impact on tourism. It is found that (1) Beijing residents have a strong perception of the negative impacts of smog, and there existed significant group differences in their perception by demographic attributes; (2) Severe smog plays dual roles in stimulating more travel demand. On the one hand, it can strengthen the ‘push force’; on the other hand, it makes those clean-air destinations have stronger ‘pull force’; (3) impacts of severe smog on tourism should be regarded dialectically. It does bring forth perceivable negative impact on the image of travel destination. However, from the perspective of tourist generating place, it can stimulate more travel demand and therefore can play a positive role in promoting tourism development in its neighboured places with good air quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Smog
• tourism impact
• travel demand
• tourist generating place
• structural equation modelling
• Beijing

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students from Minzu University of China, including Siyuan Guo, Song Zang, Yanan Pei, and Lu Yang, for their kind involvement with the questionnaire survey. We also would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their kind and critical comments of the manuscript and insightful revision suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Q1 is ‘I know well about smog’.

2 Q4 is ‘Smog problem is very severe in Beijing’, Q5 is ‘There are lots of harmful pollutants floating in air when severe smog comes’, Q6 is ‘Severe smog can cause respiratory disease’, and Q9 is ‘Severe smog can lower the quality of your life’.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Beijing Social Science Fund [grant number 15JGB073] and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant number 2016M590154].