Identifying Factors Influencing Recreational Travel during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149, Issue 2
Abstract
This study aims to identify the psychological constructs that are antecedents to people’s intention to travel to a tourist destination during the COVID-19 pandemic using the extended theory of planned behavior (ETPB) and necessary condition analysis (NCA). Online survey responses collected from 1,259 participants in the United States in May–June 2021 are used for the study. We find a moderating effect of public trust towards the government on the relationship between travel concerns and intentions. Results suggest that certain levels of public trust, subjective norm, perceived benefit of travel, perceived behavioral control, and perceived knowledge of the pandemic are necessary to manifest travel intentions. We uncover that providing travel incentives and better dissemination of the pandemic-related information can potentially encourage people to regain their original travel intention that was lost due to the pandemic. Furthermore, the bottlenecks obtained using NCA show that travel intentions are more easily manifested by perceived knowledge of the pandemic versus others. This study demonstrates the application of NCA, which can be further extended to make policy-level decisions for transportation systems.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are proprietary or confidential in nature and may only be provided with restrictions.
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and partially supported by the Center for Transportation Innovations in Education and Research (C-TIER) at the University of Memphis. Any findings and opinions expressed in this paper are of the authors alone.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149 • Issue 2 • February 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 2, 2021
Accepted: Sep 20, 2022
Published online: Nov 21, 2022
Published in print: Feb 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Apr 21, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Business management
- Computer networks
- Computing in civil engineering
- Epidemic and pandemic
- Government
- Human and behavioral factors
- Infrastructure
- Internet
- Organizations
- Practice and Profession
- Public administration
- Public health and safety
- Recreation
- Tourism
- Traffic congestion
- Traffic engineering
- Traffic management
- Transportation engineering
- Travel patterns
- Urban and regional development
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