Urban air pollution in China: destination image and risk perceptions

By Susanne Becken, Xin Jin, C. Zhang, Jun Gao. 2017

211 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT Inbound tourist arrivals into China have been declining in recent years, possibly in response to increasing levels of urban air pollution. To examine Westerners’ contemporary views on China as a travel destination, with a particular focus on air pollution, this research surveyed 600 US and Australian residents. An online panel survey collected data on cognitive and affective destination image, cognitive and affective risk perceptions, intention to visit China and key demographic variables. The findings show that, while China's cognitive image attributes were perceived positively, potential travellers expressed negative views about travel risks in China in general and about air quality in particular. Importantly, feelings towards the risk of air quality had a significant negative impact on destination image as well as intention to visit China. The research contributes to theory by highlighting the importance of considering affective risk perceptions in destination image studies. While some market segments seemed less sensitive to air pollution than others, this paper concludes that unless China proactively addresses the problem of air pollution, for example by seeking to stimulate positive feelings, international arrivals may continue to be compromised.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/837aff60eabf15e21257a2bb961c403c743dc715

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

C. Michael Hall

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Destination image during the COVID-19 pandemic and future travel behavior: The moderating role of past experience (2021, background): “Different studies have highlighted the importance of health destination image for the competitiveness of tourism destinations (Becken et al., 2017).”
Air pollution and tourism development: An interplay (2020, unknown): “Although such a deficit in China's tourism industry was caused by a series of economic and non-economic factors both home and abroad, many scholars believed that China's environmental issues (particularly its air quality) were a significant factor (Becken et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2019).”