Tourist adaptation behavior in response to climate disasters in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

To assess the impacts of climate disasters on the behavior of tourists in Bangladesh, this study makes an initial attempt to investigate tourists’ adaptation behavior in response to climate disasters. A questionnaire survey was developed and administered to address both tourists’ previous adaptation behavior and their stated adaptation behavior in response to different future climate disasters. The choice modeling analysis of tourists’ previous behavior revealed that a cyclone is more likely to result in the cancellation of a trip, and a flood is more likely to result in a change in trip timing. As for the stated behavior analysis, it was confirmed that most variables related to disaster severity show significant influence on adaptation behavior. The results also indicate that construction of disaster-resilient transportation networks is essential to avoid trip cancellations. In addition, improving market-oriented tourism service quality in Bangladesh could play a significant role in reducing the probability of both trip cancellations and changes of destination. The findings of this study can provide the tourism industry in Bangladesh with critical insights for future disaster management and sustainable development of the tourism industry.

孟加拉国应对气候灾害的旅游者适应行为

为了评估孟加拉国的旅游者行为的气候灾难影响，该研究做了一个初步的尝试来调查旅游者对气候灾害的行为适应。问卷发展和分发是为了了解旅游者以前的适应行为和他们所谓的适应行为来应对不同的将来气候灾害。对旅游者以前的行为模型分析的选择揭示了旋风是更能引起旅行的取消，洪水更能引起旅行时间的改变。作为提到的行为分析，研究确定大部分的变量是和灾难严重程度相关，显示对适应行为的重要影响。结论也显示了灾难恢复交通网络的建设是避免旅行取消的重要点。另外，改善孟加拉国的市场出发的旅游服务质量可以扮演一个重要的职责来减少旅行取消和目的地改变的可能性。该研究的结论能为孟加拉国的旅游业将来的灾难管理和旅游业的可持续性发展提供重要的看法。

KEYWORDS:

• Climate disasters
• tourist adaptation behavior
• stated preference survey
• Bangladesh

关键词:

• 气候灾难
• 旅游者适应行为
• 意向调查
• 孟加拉国

Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the Global Environmental Leaders Education Program for Designing a Low-Carbon Society, MEXT Special Coordination Funds for Promotion of Science and Technology, Japan (October 2008 to September 2012).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Some levels of disaster attributes were decided by referring to analysis results by Lee (2013), who made a prediction about future disasters in Bangladesh, under the support by the research project mentioned in Acknowledgments section. For making the prediction, Lee and the second author of this paper jointly visited a national institute in Bangladesh for getting opinions of local experts, who also provided opinions on how to describe the disaster attributes in our survey.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) [project title: Global Environmental Leaders Education Program for Designing a Low-Carbon Society].

Notes on contributors

Lingling Wu

Lingling Wu is a research fellow at Institution for Transport Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan. Her main research interests include tourist behavior modeling, regional and transportation planning.

Junyi Zhang

Junyi Zhang is a professor in Hiroshima University, Japan. His research interests mainly include tourism behavior and policy, activity-travel behavior survey and modeling, and transportation and urban issues in developing countries.

Qingchang Lu

Qingchang Lu is an assistant professor in Shanghai Jiaotong University. His research interest is climate change adaptation strategies and transportation-related climate change researches.

A. B. M. Sertajur Rahman

A. B. M. Sertajur Rahman is an assistant project director in Roads and Highways Department of Bangladesh.