与新冠肺炎疫情相关的旅游者行为研究——回顾与反思

旅游者行为研究一直是国内外旅游学界关注的重点和热点。在全球旅游业遭遇新冠肺炎疫情带来的巨大冲击和挑战时,英文期刊上与新冠疫情相关的旅游者行为研究也与日俱增。虽然英文学界对与新冠疫情相关的旅游研究有过零星的、整体上的批判性思考,但鲜见对旅游者行为这一具体研究领域最新进展和实质贡献的讨论。基于对8种旅游类英文SSCI期刊截至2021年8月31日所载83篇论文的分析,本文回顾了与新冠疫情相关的旅游者行为研究进展,并评价了这些研究的实质贡献。从研究主题看,现有文献集中在“风险感知与出游意向”“旅游购买决策”“实际旅游中的行为与体验”和“对技术的态度”等四个方面。从研究取向看,定量研究占主导;与之相对应的是,问卷调查是主要的数据收集渠道。虽然大部分研究明确提及使用了某种或某几种理论,但主要是应用现有理论来提出所假设的变量之间的关系,或解释新冠疫情背景下新的旅游消费现象,并未对现有理论框架、概念做出重大改变。未来的研究还应该考虑运用定性方法、大数据分析技术和实验法,挖掘、识别、验证新冠疫情作为公共健康危机的独特属性以及与之关联的独特的旅游者行为和旅游消费现象,以期更好地实现概念化、理论化,并在中国特色的疫情防控实践中,更好地实现与新冠疫情有关的旅游者行为研究的本土化。

Tourist behavior research related to the COVID-19 pandemic published in English-language journals: A critical review and reflections

Tourist behavior has long been one of the most researched themes in tourism literature. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous strikes and challenges to the global tourism industry. Within this context, an increasing number of studies related to both tourist behaviors and the COVID-19 pandemic have been published in English-language journals. Despite critical discussions on COVID-19 related tourism studies on a whole, preceding review studies have largely failed to specifically and systematically assess the up-to-date progress of and substantive contributions made by COVID-19 related tourist behavior studies. Based on an analysis of 83 articles published in the top 8 SSCI listed academic journals in the field of tourism as of 31 August, 2021, the following conclusions are drawn. First, the extant studies could be categorized, according to their research themes, into four clusters, namely risk perception and travel intention, tourism decision-making, actual behaviors and experience, and attitude towards technology. Second, quantitative studies are dominant in article number, most of which are in favor of either questionnaire surveys or experiments. Third, with respect to substantive contributions, significant theoretical contributions are rarely made in the extant studies, most of which are found approaching solving real-world problems and/or depicting consumer phenomena, instead of building theories. Specifically, those sampled studies were using a theory (or theories) either to help develop hypotheses regarding the relationships between well-known concepts or to help describe and/or interpret an alleged novel consumer phenomenon. As such, it is suggested at the end of this article that future studies could benefit greatly from more rigorous conceptualization and theorization by using qualitative methods, big data techniques, and experiments in their excavation, identification, and confirmation of the uniqueness of the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health crisis as well as the associated distinctive tourism consumer phenomena. Further, indigenized tourist behavior research related to COVID-19, which is deeply rooted in the pandemic prevention and control practices and tourism development in China, should be highly encouraged.