Conditional recipes for predicting impacts and prescribing solutions for externalities: the case of COVID-19 and tourism

ABSTRACT

The omnipotent and omnipresent effect of externalities fundamentally affect the way research is conducted. This research note seeks to clarify the ways in which research can be designed to predict the impacts of externalities and to prescribe solutions to mitigate the negative impacts or to leverage off the positive impacts from externalities. Using the COVID-19 pandemic and the tourism industry as a case, this research note demonstrates that taking a conditional approach is necessary to delineate the differences in impact in prediction and prescription endeavours, as the absence of boundary conditions would limit interpretations to only descriptions and associations, regardless of whether primary or secondary research is pursued. In doing so, this research note hopes to inspire greater predictive- and prescriptive-oriented research and to support future research endeavours in this direction.

KEYWORDS:

• Prediction
• impact
• prescription
• solution
• externality
• COVID-19
• tourism

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Weng Marc Lim

Weng Marc Lim is an Adjunct Professor of Swinburne Business School at Swinburne University of Technology’s home campus in Australia and a Professor and the Head of School of Business at Swinburne University of Technology’s international branch campus in Malaysia. He is also a Director of the Tourism, Hospitality, and Destination Management (THDM) research group. He holds a doctorate in business and economics from Monash University and several post-doctorate certificates in leadership and pedagogy from Cornell University and Harvard University. To date, Marc has published more than 50 articles in ‘A*’ and ‘A’ rank journals. He has also presented his work and led high-level policy discussions at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the World Economic Forum. Contact: @limwengmarc on Instagram and Twitter or his personal homepage at https://www.wengmarc.com.