‘I’ve been to Bali too’ (and I will be going back): are terrorist shocks to Bali's tourist arrivals permanent or transitory?

Abstract

International visitor arrivals to Bali are examined using univariate and panel Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root tests with one and two structural breaks to ascertain if shocks to the time path of tourist arrivals are permanent or transitory. The univariate LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks fail to reject the null hypothesis of a unit root in international visitor arrivals to Bali. However, the panel LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks applied to a panel of Bali's 11 major source markets reject the null and support the alternative hypothesis of a joint trend-stationary series with transitory shocks. This result suggests that, the effects of the recent terrorist acts on Bali on the growth path of tourist arrivals from major markets are only transitory and that as a consequence Bali's tourism sector is sustainable in the long run.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Fara Azmat, Jade Bilardi and Fang-Fah Lam for research assistance with this project and an anonymous referee for several helpful comments.

Notes

¹ The results of the univariate LM unit root tests applied to individual source markets are not reported, but are available on request.