A review of research on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.102812Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Synthesises 142 journal papers on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management

  • Identifies research focus and methodologies employed

  • Identifies research gaps and suggests future research topics and methodological approaches

  • Launches the Annals Virtual Special Issue on Tourism Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management

Abstract

This article reviews 142 papers published between 1960 and 2018 on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management. The article (1) takes a thematic approach to synthesise past research focus and identifies gaps, (2) examines research methodologies employed, and (3) suggests future research and methodological approaches to help progress the field. The article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management, which contains past and hot off the press work on the topic and will continue to grow as new articles on the topic appear in Annals.

Introduction

Risk is inherent in our daily lives in home and work contexts, and is also present when we travel. In simple terms risk includes concepts of uncertainty and potential negative consequences (Slovic, 1987), whereby something of value is lost (Chien, Sharifpour, Ritchie, & Watson, 2017). Risk can be considered from the perspective of a traveller, a business operator or a tourism destination. Risk can also be considered as comprising either (1) absolute or real risk, or (2) subjective perceptions of risk (Bauer, 1960). Subjective perceived risk is often the focus of tourism researchers, as it is the consumer or manager perceptions of risk that influence their decisions.

In a traveller context perceived risk can affect travellers' destination choice and travel behaviour (Reichel, Fuchs, & Uriely, 2007). Managers perceptions and attitudes toward risk has also shown to influence their crisis and disaster planning and response strategies (Wang & Ritchie, 2012). To delimit this review article we focus on large-scale risks, namely crises and disasters. Although we do not discuss the definitions and theoretical foundation of risk in detail, notions of perceived risk including uncertainty and negative consequences are embedded in our article. Readers are referred to Williams and Baláž (2015) for a detailed review of the theoretical foundations and definitions of risk and uncertainty in tourism.

The tourism industry and especially international tourism demand is acknowledged to be vulnerable to crises or disasters (Cró & Martins, 2017). This is because tourism is impacted by many external factors, including political instability, economic conditions, the environment and weather (Okumus, Altinay, & Arasli, 2005). The susceptibility of tourism industries has also been recognised by industry bodies and agencies. As a result a number of reports, templates and toolkits to help industry prepare and respond to crises and disasters have been published. Examples include Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) (2003) guide and subsequent follow up publication (Beirman & Van Walbeek, 2011) which provide a guide and templates for industry professionals. The UNWTO (2011) provided a crisis communication toolbox, including insights and templates specifically concerning crisis communication and recovery marketing. Sectoral materials have also been produced, including hotel resilience strategies and guidelines (UNDRR, PATA, & GIRDM, 2015).

Although useful, for this review article we focus on academic journal papers related to crises and disasters, which threaten the viability of tourism businesses and destinations due to their scale and impact. Such events can create high levels of uncertainty and require urgent strategies to help businesses and destinations to respond and recovery from their negative impacts. The impact of crises and disasters on tourism can be complex based on their nature, magnitude and scale (Backer & Ritchie, 2017). Some incidents are over quickly and recovery periods can be short (i.e. terrorist attacks), while others such as natural disasters which damage infrastructure and communications (i.e. earthquakes), taking years for communities to recover. Response and recovery are likely to be different based on the nature and impact of the crisis or disaster. In some instances, the destination may not be directly affected by the crisis making it difficult to manage, such as the Ebola-induced tourism crisis in The Gambia (Novelli, Burgess, Jones, & Ritchie, 2018).

Pauchant and Mitroff (1992, p.15) define a crisis as a ‘disruption that physically affects a system as a whole and threatens its basic assumptions, its subjective sense of self, its existential core’. A useful definition is provided by Sönmez et al. (1994, p.22) who stated that a tourism crisis is: ‘any occurrence which can threaten the normal operation and conduct of tourism related businesses; damage a tourist destination's overall reputation for safety, attractiveness and comfort by negatively affecting visitors’ perceptions of that destination; and, in turn, cause a downturn in the local travel and tourism economy and interrupt the continuity of business operations for the local travel and tourism industry by the reduction in tourist arrivals and expenditures.

Studies (Faulkner & Russell, 2001; Ritchie, 2004, Ritchie, 2009) distinguish between crises and disasters based on whether the cause is due to some internal organizational failure to act (a crisis) or an external event over which the organization has no control (a disaster). Natural disasters are natural hazards which affect people and property. These can include earthquakes, cyclones/typhoons, flooding and bushfire. Climate change has led to more extreme weather and increased the number and impact of natural disasters. For instance, in 2018, there were 281 natural disasters recorded across the world, resulting in 10,373 deaths, 61.7 million affected people, and US$160 billion in economic damage (CRED & UNISDR, 2019).

Although reviews of tourism crisis and disaster management have occurred, they have limitations related to scope and depth. First, Mair, Ritchie, and Walters (2016) focus only on post-crisis/disaster recovery strategies for tourism destinations and did not examine other management stages, such as planning and preparedness. In an increasingly crisis and disaster prone world, a focus on these stages is essentially to help businesses and destinations reduce vulnerability and build resilience in advance of crises and disasters. Second, a study by Jiang, Ritchie, and Benckendorff (2017) uses citation analysis and bibliometric visualisation tools to explore the network structure of the field. This provides a good macro level overview of the field and its development, but is unable to provide a detailed micro review of individual articles. This paper compliments these two review articles by providing a detailed in-depth review of 142 articles on tourism crisis and disaster planning and management from 1960 to 2018. The first section of this article provides an overview of the key findings and methodological approaches to research using a narrative synthesis approach. It then focuses on three key critiques based on gaps identified and poses future research topics under each of the themes. This helps us to identify suggestions for future research topics, prior to a short conclusion. In doing so it makes a unique contribution by helping to chart the evolution of the field and help guide future research directions.

Section snippets

Methodology

The review included tourism and hospitality journal articles published between 1960 and 2018 focused on tourism crisis/disaster management. Articles were selected from three sources: the Scopus database, CiteSpace and Google Scholar. Scopus has over 21,950 peer-reviewed journals (including more than 3600 open-access journals) and over 5000 publishers (Elsevier, 2017). It has over 1.4 billion cited reference dating back to 1970, which is on average 10%–15% larger than other database (Elsevier,

Results

The Results section begins with an overview of the nature of the studies identified and focus areas, using the crisis and disaster management lifecycle (Faulkner, 2001; Ritchie, 2004). This is complimented by a summary of the main research approaches and methods used. The results then turn in the three main themes uncovered in the research. These three themes are critically discussed and future research topics posed to help guide future research under each theme. Appendix 3 in Supplementary

Critical analysis

A further narrative analysis of the data has enabled the authors to identify limitations in the current evolution of the field. The three main critiques and research gaps in the literature were considered as: (1) a lack of conceptual and theoretical foundations, (2) lack of empirical testing of models/theory, and (3) unbalanced research theme coverage. We use the metaphor of a tree and argue that the foundation and roots of the tree must be strong (theory/concepts) in order to support the

Conclusion

This paper had provided a narrative review of 142 papers in tourism crisis and disaster management field. This paper compliments previous work that looked at the citation network and structure of the field at a macro level (Jiang et al., 2017). We provide an overview of the key findings and methodological approaches to research in the field. Past studies are reliant on qualitative case study research, and have a lack of conceptual and theoretical based papers. The paper provided three key

Declaration of competing interest

None.

Brent W. Ritchie studies risk management in tourism, with a specific interest in the planning, response and recovery from crises and disasters at an organizational and destination level. He also studies consumer risk perceptions and decision-making.

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    Brent W. Ritchie studies risk management in tourism, with a specific interest in the planning, response and recovery from crises and disasters at an organizational and destination level. He also studies consumer risk perceptions and decision-making.

    Yawei Jiang's research interests include strategic management, stakeholder collaboration and dynamic capabilities in tourism crisis and disaster management, organisational recovery and resilience in managing environmental uncertainties, and risk communication strategies for tourism destinations.

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