1 Introduction

With the development of society and economy, the improvement of people’s living standards and the increase in leisure time, the tourism industry grows rapidly. From the formation and development of world tourism, it has entered a period of steady development. Since the nineties, China’s tourism industry has gone into the fast lane. In 2013, the number of domestic trips was 3.26 billion passengers and tourism revenue reached 2.6276 trillion yuan (People’s Republic of China National Bureau of Statistics 2013). With the increase in people’s travel times and extension of tourism space, the problem of travel safety is increasing and travel risks are growing. Tourism risk is that tourists in their travel behavior perceive negative results that may occur (Fischer et al. 1991; Chen et al. 2009). When tourists choose a tourist destination, they have to consider the security situation of their destination, but security cannot be quantified (Suddle 2009). So it is necessary to link security and risk (Lepp and Gibson 2003).

From the constructivist perspective to interpret, in contemporary society, it is not only that the risk is increasing (Beck 1999), people’s attention and awareness of risk is greatly increasing (Liu 2009). Tourism risk perception is that tourists make a judgment of the uncertainty of tourism activities results and the process (Liu and Gao 2008). In the process of joining tourism activities, the objectivity of quantitative risk exists really, but the effect of subjective risk perception is more obvious (Cater 2006). Each visitor has a certain threshold that they can bear of the tourism risk perception. When the risk exceeds this threshold, visitors will try to reduce risk (Dirk 2003). Specific to the tourism activities, it is the impact of the tourism motivation and the choice of the way to travel and tourism (Teng 2009). In addition, the public’s risk perception level is often used to analyze the psychological panic state.

Generally speaking, tourism risk perception theory involves psychology, sociology, culture, economics and many other disciplines. Risk information transmission, risk perception and risk response constitute the three elements of public risk communication. Risk perception is the psychological experience and understanding of the people’s influence on the daily life and work. How to treat risk and whether it can accurately judge the hazard plays a key role in people’s risk communication. Influencing factors analysis of risk perception and the amplification of negative factors are two important issues. To a certain extent, the collective explanation of risk information improves the level of public risk awareness, while it may also lead to disaster rumors (Quarantelli 1983; Prashant and Nicholas 2004; Carol 2015).

On the basis of researching literatures of the domestic and foreign scholars studying on tourism risk perception in system, from three aspects which are tourism risk perception’s concept, factors and evaluation, this paper researches the progress in tourism risk perception evaluation and proposes three views of the concept of tourism risk perception. By analyzing the type of subjective and objective factors that affect tourism risk perception, the paper summarizes the basic idea, general methodology and mature conclusions of travel risk perception measurement and evaluation and proposes the foundation, critical and significance of travel risk perception evaluation.

2 The concept of tourism risk perception

Tourism is often regarded as a kind of consumer activity (Roselius 1997; Moutinho 1987; Zhang et al. 2004). Its risk is often that the product or service cannot meet the expectation of tourists or that is the collection of factors which are beyond the control during tourism consumption process (Oliver 1980; An and Fu 2005). With the development of “risk” concept (United Nation 1989; Jones and Boer 2003), tourism risk gradually is understood as the synthesis of two dimensions which are “the possibility that tourists subject to various unfortunate on a trip or a tourist destination” (Tsaur et al. 1997) and “tourists can not determine the consequences or negative results after making travel decisions” (Schiffman and Kanuk 2000; Chen et al. 2009).

Since the 1990s, tourist risk has been widely concerned by the scholars of cognitive psychology and consumer behavior (Sonmez and Graefe 1998a) and the concept of “tourism risk perception” came into being. Risk perception is generally used to describe a concept of people’s attitude and intuitive judgment toward risk (Slovic 1987; Sitkin and Pablo 1992; Xie and Xu 1996). Bauer introduced the concept of risk to the consumer perception behavioral studies for the first time (Bauer 1960). The representation and definition of the concept of “Travel risk perception” are shown as follows (Table 1).

Table 1 The related concepts of tourism risk perception
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At present, the academic background of scholars engaged in tourism risk perception can be summarized as cognitive psychology, consumer behavior discipline and travel safety discipline. Correspondingly, the concept of “tourism risk perception” can also be divided into three views (Fig. 1), namely

Fig. 1
figure 1

Three views of tourism risk perception concept

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  1. 1.

    Tourism risk perception is tourists’ subjective feelings of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel;

  2. 2.

    Tourism risk perception is tourists’ objective evaluation of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel;

  3. 3.

    Tourism risk perception is tourists’ cognitive of exceeding the threshold portion of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel.

3 Tourism risk perception factors

3.1 Subjective factors

The two dimensions of tourism risk perception determine the factors affecting the tourism risk perception include subjective and objective factors (Brun 1992; Reisinger and Mavondo 2006; Kozak et al. 2007). As mentioned above, cognitive psychology school concerns tourists’ subjective feelings of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel. The tourism risk perception is significantly influenced by the physical characteristics and psychological processes (such as attention, perception, effect of representation, memory, thinking and language skills) of tourists. Table 2 shows the researching results of the subjective factors of tourism risk perception from scholars in recent years.

Table 2 Subjective factors of tourism risk perception
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Currently, the subjective factors affecting tourism risk perception can be divided into two categories, namely demographic variables and individual cognitive abilities. The former includes age, gender, educational experience, academic background, social status, geography, education level, income and social experience. The latter focuses on temperament, personality, emotions, outlook, values, cognitive and meta-cognitive and so on. Subjective factors influencing tourism risk perception mainly are as follows (Ahmad et al. 2015):

  1. 1.

    Women’s sensibility for travel risk is slightly higher than that of men;

  2. 2.

    The similarity of culture and psychology and spatial contiguity of geographical position determines the feeling of tourists for the loss;

  3. 3.

    When people have the higher level of education, the more frequent contact with media people and the higher the class status, the level of their risk perception is stronger;

  4. 4.

    When people are more confidence with information sources and agencies, their risk perception is stronger;

  5. 5.

    Urban residents have a stronger risk perception than rural residents;

  6. 6.

    People’s concerns, anxiety and other emotions for travel risk can affect individual’s awareness of risk perceptions, whereas the understanding of the individual’s tourism risks will also affect their emotional intensity.

3.2 Objective factors

The objective factors affecting tourism risk perception mainly refer to negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel. They can be summarized as multiple dimensions of tourism risk. Table 3 shows the results of scholars’ studies about objective factors of tourism risk perception in recent years. Tourists risk perception is often five to seven dimensions, namely

Table 3 Objective factors of tourism risk perception
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  1. 1.

    five-dimension risk: psychological risk, financial risk, performance risk, health risk and social risk;

  2. 2.

    six-dimension risk: performance risk, physical risk, financial risk, psychological risk, social risk and time risk;

  3. 3.

    seven-dimension risk: physical risk, economic risk, equipment risk, social risk, psychological risk, time risk and opportunity loss.

It should be noted that the multi-dimensional tourism risk factors often include “psychological risk.” The school of consumer behavior recognizes the psychological factor as the cognitive of tourists for their behavior after they make the wrong purchase decision. In recent years, the gradual development of tourism safety leads to the study on tourism safety cognition (Zheng 2009). Tourism security school considers that the objective factors affecting tourism safety perception include the social and natural environment in tourist destinations and the security situation of “food, housing, transportation, travel, shopping, entertainment” in the process of travel (Wu et al. 2001; Yvette and Felix 2005; Atila and Fisun 2007; Zhu 2008).

“Through summarizing and analyzing the relevant literature, the dominant risk factors influencing the tourism are proposed for different types of tourism resources and different tourism groups (Table 4). The first three factors influencing the tourism risk when tourists visit different types of destination were listed in the left part of Table 4. The risk degree is characterized by star numbers. Specifically, physical risk is most important for natural tourism resources or scenic areas (such as land scenery, waters scenery, biological landscape, astronomer and climatic scenery), followed by equipment risk and performance risk. For cultural relics such as sites, sites, buildings, etc., the equipment risk was the most important. For tourism commodity and cultural tourism activities, financial risk may be the most concern of tourists.

Table 4 The dominant factors influencing tourism risk perception under different situations
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Correspondingly, the right part of Table 4 lists the risk factors which tourists of different ages pay more attention to during the traveling. For example, teenagers and old people may more care about physical risk and equipment risk, while youth focuses on financial risk and middle-aged people mind time risk.”

4 Evaluation of tourism risk perception

Tourism risk perception assessment is the process of qualitative analysis and measurement to the subjective and objective factors affecting tourists risk perception (Fuchs and Reichel 2004, 2006; Eitzigera and Wiedemannb 2007), which includes:

  1. 1.

    Analysis on tourism risk perception factors and dimensions design;

  2. 2.

    Tourism risk perception evaluation model construction and weight determination;

  3. 3.

    Measurement and classification of tourism risk perception level;

  4. 4.

    Impact of statistical factor for tourism risk perception.

For the tourism system, tourism risk assessment has two main methods (An and Fu 2005; Wang 2010), namely risk expected evaluation and tourists risk perception. The former is the process of estimating the tourism risk on the basis of reasonable expectation without considering tourist value. The latter focuses on the assessment of tourist subjective risk perception, reflecting the personality differences and property values of tourists.

It should be noted that “tourism risk perception assessment” is often confused with “travel risk assessment.” The former can be understood as the research of “tourism risk” concept’s first and third view. The latter is focused on the second view of the concept of “tourism risk.” It should be said that scholars in the field of natural sciences (such as environmental science, geography, biology, disaster science and safety study) prefer researching “travel risk assessment.” Scholars in the field of social sciences (such as psychology, economics, behavioral science, sociology and management) are deeper concern about “tourism risk perception assessment.”

4.1 Evaluation model

In accordance with the content of the evaluation, tourism risk perception evaluation model is divided into two categories: conceptual model and factor model. The former is from the concept of tourism risk perception, stressing the subjective feeling of tourists on travel services’ “uncertainty” and “dangerousness of consequence.” It is also known as two-factor model (Cunningham 1967; Peter and Ryan 1976; Whyte and Burton 1982; Ammann 2006; Schneider et al. 2006). Researchers often use simple weighted model to evaluate the tourism risk perception level of tour groups comprehensively (Roehl and Fesenmaier 1992; Cao and Wang 2001; Boksbergera et al. 2007; Liu and Gao 2008; Zhang 2012a). The model can be expressed as:

$$TRP = \sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n} {(\alpha_{i} \times PL_{ri} \times IL_{ri} )}$$

Among them, TRP is tourism risk perception; α i is the weight of each dimension of the tourism risk perception; r i is the risk of each dimension (i = 1, 2, 3,…, n); PL ri is the possibility of each dimension risk; and IL ri is the harm of each dimension risk.

This kind of model is based on the concept of risk. In different situations, the risks are weighted and quantified to evaluate tourism risk perception. The advantage of the model is that it is specific and the factors determination and the data acquisition are precise. The latter considers the subjective and objective factors of tourism risk perception, which is called “multi-dimensional model.” This model has no fixed form, and the relevant questionnaire is designed according to different tourism scenarios. And then, the “Likert scale” is used to quantify the factors. Finally, the results are processed by statistical method, so as to complete the evaluation of tourism risk perception (Wu et al. 2001; Myron et al. 2004; Chen et al. 2009; Fuchs and Reichel 2011; Li et al. 2011; Fuchs 2013; Lin and Hsu 2013; Chiao and Vikneswaran 2014).

The advantage of this model is that it can reflect various subjective and objective factors which affect the tourism risk perception, and it is flexible and changeable, and it can deal with all kinds of different risk scenarios. Table 5 shows the evaluation models and methods of the tourism risk perception which is used by scholars in recent years. Currently, the tourism risk perception evaluation model used by scholars can be understood as the corrections or improvements of the two types of models mentioned above.

Table 5 Evaluation models and methods of tourism risk perception
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4.2 Evaluation method

Tourism risk perception assessment includes data acquisition method and data processing method. Scholars use questionnaires, supplemented by interviews and statistics when they get quantitative data on the subjective and objective factors of tourism risk perception (Table 5). The difference is the design of questionnaire and sampling methods. They often use “Likert scale” in the evaluation of tourism risk.

Currently, the statistical method is widely used in the data processing of tourism risk perception assessment, such as basic descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis, cluster analysis, variance analysis and factor analysis. The statistical analysis software includes SPSS, SAS, Visual FoxPro, Excel and Orange. It should be noted that some scholars have tried to introduce GIS software in this issue to reflect the spatial distribution of tourism risk perception in the form of thematic maps.

4.3 Evaluation results

The result of tourism risk perception assessment is divided into quantitative indicators and qualitative conclusions. The former includes frequency, mean (risk perception evaluation value), standard deviation, Cronbach’s alpha, correlation coefficients, adjoint probability, regression coefficients, factor load, the characteristic roots and explained variance. The latter’s general conclusions can be summarized as follows:

  1. 1.

    The greatest impact on tourists’ sense of security is social security;

  2. 2.

    Travel distance has a positive correlation with travel fear and strangeness;

  3. 3.

    Travel experiences have a significant impact on the risk perception (especially social risk);

  4. 4.

    Tourists concern the entity risk more than the invisible risk;

  5. 5.

    There is a negative correlation between risk perception and the preference of travel behavior;

  6. 6.

    For the first time, visitors often pay attention to human risk, psychosocial risk, food safety and weather risk. Then, visitors are more concerned about the risk of finances, quality of service, natural disasters and accidents;

  7. 7.

    There is a certain correlation between the level of tourism risk perception, destination satisfaction and the impact of natural disasters;

  8. 8.

    There are significant differences of cognitive between travel risk’s internal dimensions and its attributes;

  9. 9.

    The risk cognitive level of the people at the mature age is higher than that of the age of puberty and sturdy;

  10. 10.

    When tourists seek stimulate, the impact on tourism risk perception is greater; high sensation seekers have a stronger perception on the external risks.

5 Conclusion and discussion

The research of travel risk perception has been more than half a century. The science of consumer behavior, cognitive psychology and tourism safety explore the characterization of tourism risk and the evaluation of risk perception from a different perspective. Sum up as follows:

  1. 1.

    There were three views of tourism risk perception, which were subjective feelings of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel, objective evaluation of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel and cognition of exceeding the threshold portion of the negative consequences or negative impact that may occur during travel.

  2. 2.

    There were two-dimensional impact factors (subjective) and the seven-dimensional impact factors (objective) of tourism risk perception. The former were the physical characteristics and psychological processes, and the latter include physical risk, economic risk, equipment risk, social risk, psychological risk, time risk and opportunity loss.

  3. 3.

    There were two types of risk perception assessment models, which were summarized as the multi-dimensional model and the two-factor model.

  4. 4.

    The survey (with interviews) and mathematical statistical analysis of tourism risk perception assessment;

  5. 5.

    The subjective and objective laws of travel risk perception’s ability and level.

The development of the concept of tourism risk perception reflects the intersecting of economics, tourism, psychology and other disciplines. The theoretical and empirical studies of objective tourism risk (second level) and subjective tourism perception (first level) are more abundant, while the studies of the measure and define of tourism risk perception threshold (third level) are relatively less. The author’s academic background relates to geography, environmental science, risk science and tourism. The paper intends to study tourism risk perception from the perspective of travel security management and tourism geographical systems and make the following ideas for reference:

  1. 1.

    The basis of tourism risk perception assessment is the science and rationality of the hypothesis. According to the empirical facts of tourism activities and the travel safety scientific theory, scholars can re-conceived and speculate the category, characteristics, spatial and temporal distribution of tourism risk factor (five- or seven-dimensional) and risk perception factors (subjective and objective). Only under the logical theoretical assumptions, the explanation of tourism risk perception is necessary and valuable;

  2. 2.

    The key of tourism risk perception assessment is the decision of the risk threshold that tourists can accept. Taking the physical characteristics, learning ability and practical experience of the respondents into account, scholars make sure the withstand value (tourist risk value) of tourism risk’s consequences (such as personal injury, economic loss, psychological impact and decision-making behavior) and the probability of occurrence (percentage) through social survey methods;

  3. 3.

    The significance of tourism risk perception assessment is making tourism behavioral decision and destination security management. Acceptable risk has a positive feedback effect on tourists’ decisions, and unacceptable risk (or an unacceptable dimension risk) has a guiding role for the risk of the tourist destination control. Targeted risk prevention and strategies are importantly significant for the decision motivate of tourists, sustainable use of tourism resources and cycle of development of the tourism industry.