Understanding international travelers' health risk perceptions, preferences, and decisions: a segmentation analysis

This study assesses international travelers' risk perceptions and travel decisions related to three recent emerging diseases. Travelers can facilitate the spread of emerging infectious diseases and their decision-making on where to travel is influenced by outbreaks. These feedback loops can potentially impact the tourism economy. Often, travelers' judgment and actions towards a risk are based on their perceptions.

We conducted two surveys, using constructs from the Health Belief Model, with 747 individuals who had recently traveled to selected Latin American countries, and who had heard about Zika virus, chikungunya, and/or COVID-19. Using segmentation analysis, the respondents were grouped based on their risk perception level (i.e., low, medium and high), and we tested the differences between groups for different constructs of the model.

We found a significant difference between the risk perception groups for most of the sociodemographic factors, as well as for the purpose of the trip, regarding travel preferences. Personal experience with a disease and perceived efficacy towards diverse protective measures also differed between groups. Higher risk perception was related to reporting more changes in past travel plans, and higher likelihood of future travel avoidance if facing different risk scenarios in a tourism destination.

Including the concepts of risk perception, sociodemographic factors, previous experience, and efficacy can help better explain the individual behavior of international travelers. These findings can inform tailored and more effective mitigation and management strategies to promote safe travel and prevent disease spread in the event of a future outbreak.