COVID-19 trepidation: repercussions on air travel anxiety, anger and trust among travellers

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate how the fear of COVID-19 has impacted the air travel anxiety, anger and trust among the travellers of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, Gujarat by collecting the primary data and analyzing through a variance-based SEM approach. The data was collected from 150 travellers through the snowball sampling technique including people who travelled during unlocking of flights and experienced mental constraints before and during travelling. The study revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between air travel anxiety and anger with fear of COVID-19 and a negative and significant relationship with trust. The current study has important implications for scholars as well as for airline management to understand how hard people are affected while travelling in the fear of COVID-19 and its spread. It would also help the administration to improve the conditions to ensure the safety of travellers. The paper concludes with a few sets of recommendations because people in India are horrified by the entry of the third variant of COVID-19.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of COVID-19
• air travel anxiety
• anger trust and travelers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mansi Tiwari

Dr. Mansi Tiwari, Associate Professor specialises in the field of Human Resource Management, Gender Studies and General Management.

Deependra Sharma

Dr. Deepender Sharma is an avid academician in field of General Management.

Sumit Narula

Dr. Sumit Narula, Deputy Dean Research, Amity University Madhya Pradesh, Gwalior is working in the areas of Interdisciplinary research related to Mass Communication and General Management.