Impact of COVID-19 on ASEAN tourism industry

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine the extent of the COVID-19 on the tourism industry in ASEAN countries. This study utilized a Panel Vector Autoregression approach to examine the possible bi-directional causality that exists between COVID-19 and tourist arrivals. Data from seven ASEAN nations were used wherein accumulated numbers of cases are hypothesized due to variations in the levels of inbound tourism and other socio-economic differences. The findings indicated two-way causality between COVID-19 and tourist arrivals at the 95% significance level. The results revealed that international tourism can seriously be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• tourism
• ASEAN
• panel vector autoregression

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Roodman (2009) provides an excellent discussion of GMM estimation in a dynamic panel setting and its applications using Stata. Readers are encouraged to read his paper for a more detailed discussion of this topic.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universiti Malaya COVID-19 Related Special Research Grant (UMCSRG) 2020-2021 under Grant CSRG010-2020SS;

Notes on contributors

Loo-See Beh

Loo-See Beh, is a professor at University of Malaya, Malaysia. Her research interests include public administration, human resource management, ethics, and socio-political studies. She has published widely including in journals Public Management Review, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, PLoS One, Peer J, The Bottom Line, Review of Educational Research, etc.

Woon Leong Lin

Woon Leong Lin, is a senior lecturer at Taylor’s Business School, Taylor’s University, Malaysia. His research focus is on corporate political activity, corporate social responsibility, and business economics. He has published in refereed journals e.g. in Business Strategy and the Environment, The North American Economics and Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environment Management, International Journal of Economics and Management, International Financial Study Administrative Sciences and Environmental Science and Pollution Research.