Brent Ritchie

The University of Queensland | UQ · Faculty of Business Economics and Law

Tourism is one of the most vulnerable industries to disasters, and empirical studies on disaster preparedness have been surprisingly sparse. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this study sheds light on the unexplored mediating role of strategic decision-makers’ (SDMs) disaster cognition along with their attitude to explicate how and why lea...

When people make travel decisions, they consult their imagination, considering how they would feel in the respective travel situation. Both, researchers who examine this phenomenon and practitioners executing it, commonly hold the vague assumption of an evaluative cognitive process that enables tourists to factor such information into their decisio...

The present research examines individuals’ responses toward a misbehavior committed by their compatriot tourists in the international travel context. Specifically, it tests the impact of group identification, the mediating role of emotions and moderating effect of misbehavior severity on individuals’ evaluations of the misbehaving tourist and the d...

Research on tourist misbehaviors remains limited. This paper contributes to the literature by providing an improved conceptualization of tourist misbehavior, proposing that violating social norms of conduct and causing harm to other people/objects/environment are two essential constituents of tourist misbehavior. It offers a framework to capture th...

This study takes a processual view of resilience to investigate how tourism organisations utilise dynamic capabilities to develop resilience in a disaster context. A longitudinal qualitative research design was used to gain insights into the process. The study uses on-site observation, secondary documents, and in-depth interviews with representativ...

Purpose This paper aims to summarize the current state of research on risk, crisis and disaster management in the generic field, and in tourism and hospitality. It identifies key themes and compares the main topics studied in both the tourism and hospitality management and marketing literature. Design/methodology/approach A narrative (thematic) re...

Tourism contributes 8% to global carbon emissions. Yet, only 10% of air passengers purchase voluntary carbon offsets. We test the effectiveness of different communication messages to increase voluntary purchasing of carbon offsets by air passengers. Results of a discrete choice experiment indicate that air passengers prefer carbon offset schemes th...

Co-benefits are positive outcomes from voluntary carbon offsetting (VCO) programs beyond simple reduction in carbon emissions, which include biodiversity, air quality, economic, health, and educational benefits. Given the rates of aviation VCOs remain at less than 10%, this study investigated air passengers’ preferences for co-benefits as well as c...

This study develops a typology of dynamic capabilities to advance knowledge on how tourism organizations can manage disruptive external changes. It uses the context of a natural disaster. The article goes beyond a simple classification of organizational activities in responding to crises/disasters to create a typology of 12 dynamic capabilities. Th...

The present research examines individuals’ responses toward a misbehavior committed by their compatriot tourists in the international travel context. Specifically, it tests the effect of group identification, the mediating role of emotions and moderating effect of misbehavior severity on individuals’ evaluations of the misbehaving tourist as well a...

Travel participation and preferences are impacted by a range of constraints, which can be overcome using behavioral (i.e., actions) and cognitive (i.e., mental) constraint negotiation strategies. Given the limited focus on cognitive negotiation in tourism research, this study aims to expand travel constraint negotiation theory using a sequential mi...

Tourism contributes 8% to global carbon emissions. Yet only 10% of air passengers purchase voluntary carbon offsets. We test the effectiveness of different communication messages to increase voluntary purchasing of carbon offsets by air passengers. Results of a discrete choice experiment indicate that air passengers prefer carbon offset schemes tha...

COVID-19 has generated an unprecedented level of public fear, likely impeding tourism industry recovery after the pandemic is over. This study explores what trigger the public's pandemic 'travel fear' and how people impose self-protection, coping and resilience related to travel. The study integrates theories including protection motivation theory,...

Dynamic capabilities enable tourism organisations to manage crises and disasters, yet many do not possess these competencies. This paper investigates the factors that enable or impede the development of dynamic capabilities in tourism organisations that help them to survive and thrive in crises or disaster environments. These enablers and barriers...

Public trust plays a vital role in a public health crisis. Drawing on trust and protection motivation theories, the study explores how people impose trust, fear and perceived threat in postpandemic travel decisions. Employing a quota sampling approach, the research collected from an online survey of 1208 respondents across regions in mainland China...

People mentally simulate future events, visualise themselves in these events, and then make predictions about how they would feel. This process is referred to as affective forecasting. Tourism lends itself toward affective forecasting because holiday experiences are not tangible and difficult to judge upfront. The authors conceptualise and empirica...

The paper examines which travel risks are more salient for tourists' destination choice. An integrated travel-decision risk typology with survey data from 835 potential tourists is developed and tested. Specifically, this paper explores the interplay of risk types, tourist attributes and destination characteristics. It examines if travel risks link...

Understanding the mechanism of vacation decision-making and the factors that influence pleasure travel behavior is crucial for tourism management and marketing. Past studies analyze the influence of constraints on travel behavior but neglect other relevant factors that influence travel behavior. This study develops a comparative research framework...

Increasingly, residents in world heritage sites (WHS) are facing dilemmas by choosing between the short-term self-interests and long-term collective benefits associated with heritage tourism development. Through the lens of social dilemma theory, this study investigated the role of social emotions in affecting resident dilemma considerations relate...

This study examines factors that influence residents’ volunteering behaviours post-completion of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It posits that residents’ interactions with the event over time and their perceptions of event legacies are likely to exert influence on volunteering. Data were collected in two phases between January 2013 a...

Abundant literature has examined resident reactions to tourism by their perceptions of perceived impacts, overlooking individual emotional responses that might be elicited by psychological causes toward specific types of tourism. This paper employs cognitive appraisal theory to explore the existence and causes of resident emotional responses to tou...

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...

To identify residents’ heterogeneity beyond a perception lens, this research seeks to cluster urban and rural residents based on their emotions, commitment and behavioral intentions toward tourism performing arts (TPA) development. A survey comprising 438 urban and 435 rural respondents was collected in Hangzhou and Yangshuo, China. A two-step clus...

While residents’ perceptions of tourism development have been widely explored through a rational cost-benefit lens, little is known about residents’ emotional responses and their influences on resident support toward tourism development. By integrating cognitive appraisal theory and affect theory of social exchange, this study examines the psycholo...

The importance of resilience for tourism organizations facing crises and disasters is indisputable. Yet little is known about how these organizations become resilient. This paper proposes that dynamic capabilities provide a mechanism that enables tourism organizations to respond to disruptive environmental changes through a process of routine trans...

Air travel is predicted to grow over the coming decades contributing to carbon emissions. Airlines have offered voluntary carbon offsetting for over a decade, yet less than 10% of air travellers purchase them. Previous studies ignore the broader policy or social context of sustainable transport and aviation offsetting. In a natural experiment, a pa...

Past literature has identified low purchase rates of aviation voluntary carbon offsetting (VCO) schemes. A lack of credibility of such schemes has been identified as a key obstacle, yet little attention has been given on how to enhance perceived credibility. Using communication theory, this study examines effects of message framing on consumers’ pe...

By applying relational cohesion theory, this study explores how resident commitment toward tourism performing arts (TPA) developments is cultivated and maintained through recurring social exchanges between residents and tourism. Based on a quota sampling method, a survey of 438 residents was undertaken in a typical TPA destination (Hangzhou) in Chi...

In increasingly uncertain and competitive markets, small tourism firms are often pressured to innovate across a diverse range of innovation types. Innovation diversity creates synergies in that capabilities developed for one type can enhance the outcomes of other types of innovation. This paper defines and examines innovation diversity, and its rel...

Protected areas have become popular tourism destinations; yet these areas are often plagued by poor governance systems, particularly in developing countries. Adaptive co-management (ACM) has been advocated as one approach to improve the governance of protected areas, yet empirical evidence from developing countries is lacking. This study investigat...

This study aims to examine how key aspects of voluntary climate action influence economic values of aviation carbon offsets using an Australian case study, where voluntary carbon offset programs for the aviation sector were active under a carbon tax between July 01, 2012 and July 17, 2014. An online survey was administered during the period using c...

Airlines have introduced voluntary carbon offsetting (VCO) products to encourage consumers to mitigate emissions from their air travel. However, literature has suggested a low VCO adoption partly because of low perceived credibility. This study investigates the impact of source credibility (expertise and trustworthiness) on air travelers’ purchase...

Many recent crisis and disasters affecting tourism have been studied, but few explicitly explore health related crisis in developing countries. This study analyses the effect of the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic (EVDE) on The Gambia, where, despite no reported cases, EVDE had devastating consequences. A Rapid Situation Analysis is used to gain insig...

Tourism researchers have identified the impact of perceived risk on destination choice and travel behaviour, and differences in general traveller risk perceptions based on both traveller and trip characteristics. However, such research has neglected the travel of international university students, despite the expansion and economic importance of th...

This chapter has provided definitions of crisis and crisis management, discussed the vulnerability of tourism to unexpected crises and outlined negative impacts of different types of crises/disasters on the tourism industry. Crises may also have transformational effects and can become turning points for businesses with effective management. Thus th...

Although motivations, constraints, and negotiation strategies influence travel decision-making, few studies have explored them together in a holistic way. This article explored these factors through testing the constraint-effects-mitigation (CEM) model in the tourism context of international university students’ travel. A questionnaire was administ...

Social learning is a participatory process designed to create shared and common understanding among actors within a social unit. This exploratory, qualitative study applies social learning theory to explore how social learning underpins the process and outcomes of tourism destination governance. This paper presents the findings of in-depth intervie...

A limited number of studies have applied bibliometric visualisation to explore the network structure of scholarly tourism knowledge. This study uses CiteSpace to analyse and visualise the intellectual structure of the tourism crisis and disaster management (TCDM) field. The use of new bibliometric visualisation techniques makes a methodological con...

Although tourism destination governance has been a subject of academic enquiry for some time now, in practice, governance is still a challenge for many tourism destinations around the world. Adaptive co-management (ACM) is a dynamic approach to governance whereby institutional arrangements and ecological knowledge are continually revised through a...

The tourism industry is vulnerable to disasters due to its heavy dependence on natural resources. Despite growing studies on tourism disaster management, little research has been conducted from a stakeholder collaboration perspective, yet effective collaboration can improve recovery outcomes. This paper integrates stakeholder collaboration literatu...

Non-compliance at national parks is a major problem around the world. This study focused on visitors' intentions to venture off-trail at the Blue Mountains National Park, Australia (BMNP). An extension of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with the new ecological paradigm of pro-environmental values (NEP) was developed and tested to understand v...

Rebuilding tourist arrivals after crises/disasters is important. However, tourism may have negative impacts in terms of interfering with the destination recovery efforts, and adding distress to local residents. Therefore, consideration should be placed on timing tourism marketing as well as the market segments most suitable to target. This paper in...

Voluntary carbon offsetting by air passengers could help counteract environmental damage caused by air travel. But adoption rates among air travellers are low. This study (1) develops new communication messages which counteract barriers to carbon offsetting identified in prior studies, and (2) tests their effectiveness using psychophysiological and...

Although the significance of travel health risks is well documented, the process through which people assess their vulnerability and ultimately take on preventive measures needs clarification. The purpose of this article is to better understand factors underlying travelers’ health risk perceptions and their protective behavior. Using the health psy...

This study took an integrated approach toward traveler risk segmentation by including psychological and behavioral variables together in the one study. This is an important first step to develop interventions targeting risk segments. A total of 864 respondents were surveyed in an Australian airport departure lounge. The results showed travel behavi...

This study developed a behavioral model of intentions to purchase aviation carbon offsets, and tested the model through structural equation models. The model draws on the established hierarchical models of human behavior to hypothesize relationships between general and specific attitudes as predictors of offsetting intentions. The New Ecological Pa...

This article presents the results of a quantitative study designed to investigate the perceptual and behavioural responses of tourists to a disastrous event. Looking specifically at the 2011 Queensland floods, this article explores the image perceptions held by 2113 members of the Australian tourism market in light of this event. It also investigat...

This paper presents the results of a review of the literature concerning post-disaster and post-crisis recovery for tourist destinations. A total of 64 articles on this topic published in peer-reviewed tourism journals between January 2000 and June 2012 were included in the review. These articles were written on a number of different disaster conte...

Following the hierarchical model of human behavior of Fulton, Manfredo, and Lipscomb (1996), this chapter develops and tests a model incorporating both general and behavior-specific components of motivation. The research aimed to investigate how general and behavior-specific attitudes work together in explaining air travelers’ carbon offsetting beh...

Although the significance of travel risks is well documented, the process through which people assess their vulnerability and ultimately take on preventive measures needs clarification. Motivated by concern with traveler’s underestimation of risks, this chapter provides a crucial next step by introducing new theory to explain how people calibrate t...

Currently tourism researchers and managers do not have a clear understanding of what research has been undertaken on tourism crisis and disaster management. They also lack a clear understanding of how the research has been undertaken. This chapter provides a synthesis of previous research related to tourism crisis and disaster management and provid...

Despite the importance of risk perceptions in decision making and destination choice, limited research has been undertaken to explore tourists' risk perceptions, especially those of rapidly growing destinations such as the Middle East. The purpose of this article is to explore the primary risk dimensions that the Australian tourism market associate...

Transformation theory attempts to understand the long-run process of structural shifts that occur in an industry and economy as a result of institutional change. While transformation theory is being advanced and tools have emerged to measure institutions, these innovations are yet to be applied to consider institutional change across the developmen...

Although voluntary carbon offsets have played a key role in the response to addressing climate change in the aviation sector, little is known about consumer preferences for such offsets and their offsetting behaviour in Australia. This paper developed and applied a choice modelling study to measure the economic values of aviation carbon mitigation...

The purpose of this paper is to focus attention on developing a workforce development strategy that comprehensively includes the critical determinants of how employees fit a particular job in a particular organization at a particular location. Appropriating the Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) framework, and incorporating person-location with p...

Tourism as one of the most economically important industries is also one of the most vulnerable to crises and disasters. This study is focused on measuring the short-term impact of a recent incidence, the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill, using a systems perspective. Drawing from two datasets measuring the performance of the hotel and vacation rental industr...

Previous tourism research recognizes the positive role that risk may play in arousing individuals' interests to engage in certain activities or to visit destinations assumed to be risky. However, limited research has been devoted to expand our understanding of the nature of the relationship between sensation seeking and tourist risk perceptions. Th...

Envisaging the future of tourism anywhere is difficult but is amplified when making predictions for the dynamic and rapidly changing Asia-Pacific region. The purpose of this conceptual article is to problematize a 2030 Asia-Pacific tourism future by modeling one polarized and probable scenario, theoretically framed within the mobilities paradigm an...

This article addresses the challenges of long-term planning for a tourism workforce at a regional level, a significant yet underconceptualized area in the literature. We draw on Yeoman’s future thinking techniques to generate a four-quadrant matrix designed to facilitate the development of scenarios that identify workforce challenges the tourism se...

To date, limited research has investigated the effects of tourist prior knowledge as a multidimensional construct on their perceived risk. This research is one of the first studies to investigate the relationships among tourists' risk perceptions and various types of their prior knowledge, namely subjective knowledge, objective knowledge, prior vis...

Economic, social, and environmental transformation of destinations as a consequence of tourism has been observed and studied extensively within the tourism literature. Transformation theory has evolved as a tool for understanding structural economic, social, or environmental change, which is driven by institutions. There is an emerging body of rese...

Crisis planning is an important strategy for developing more resilient tourism organisations. Given this, it is important to examine how managers perceive crisis planning because managers’ attitudes and perceptions may affect behavioural intentions. The objective of this study, then, is to identify the attitudes and perceptions of crisis planning b...

School excursion tourism is a relatively underresearched and poorly understood segment of the tourism industry despite its strong economic potential. This article draws on the leisure constraints theory to examine barriers to overnight school excursions in Australia. A self-completed online survey by 1,314 school excursion decision makers measured...

Despite the potential of crisis planning and preparedness to create more resilient tourism organisations, the majority of past studies concerned with tourism crises have focused on response and recovery, rather than on crisis planning. Further, most are descriptive in nature and few have undertaken a predictive or explanatory research approach unde...

Many traditionally agricultural dependent economies have transformed towards service industries, such as tourism. This transformation resulted in significant impacts upon economies, communities and the environment. However, existing indicators to measure the impacts of tourism on regions have not been examined across the transformation process, lea...

The purpose of this study is to better understand factors underlying local residents’ responses to mega event development. The authors suggest that residents’ intention to give or withhold support of hosting an event in the community can be viewed as a social dilemma and examine the effects of event publicity, perceived fairness of event portrayal,...

This article contributes to knowledge of tourist motivation and typologies in the context of golf tourism. A research framework is presented to aid the classification of golf tourists into distinct typologies based on their travel motivation. The methodology comprised both qualitative research based on semistructured interviews and quantitative res...

In many countries, tourism has emerged to become an important economic sector, often replacing traditional industries such as agriculture. This process of change, whereby an economy restructures over time from one economic sector to another as a result of institutional change, has been termed transformation. Transformation as a result of tourism ac...

As the number of disasters and crises affecting the tourism industry increases, it is becoming necessary to understand the nature of these disasters and how to manage and limit the impacts of such incidents. This paper defines crises and disasters before discussing the area of crisis communication management and crisis communication in the tourism...

Events draw large crowds of people together within defined spaces and as such have the potential to have significant impacts. Occupational health and safety requirements, legal duty of care, and the capacity of organizations to deal with risks and crisis are important considerations for the sustainability of event organizations and events themselve...

Crisis planning is an important strategy in turbulent times, and particularly important for industries such as tourism which may be prone to a range of external and internal risks, crises and disasters. Despite the importance of the accommodation industry to tourism, a lack of research has explored accommodation crisis management. Most of the studi...

Despite some recognition of the role of destination marketing organisations (DMOs) in crisis management, limited attention has focused on the role of DMOs in crisis events, and in particular their role in managing knowledge across diverse stakeholder groups and domains. This theoretical paper attempts to address this deficiency by synthesising know...

The objective of this article is to understand students' underlying attitudes, perceived constraints, and key social influences toward field trips using the theory of planned behavior as a theoretical framework. A total of 31 students who participated in a field trip as part of their hospitality and tourism degree program were interviewed. Results...

Vital to the development of urban tourism are capital cities. According to Hall (2002: 235) “capital cities are an important component of the national fabric of almost every country in the world yet, surprisingly, very little has been written about their tourism significance.” Capital cities provide an administrative base of government operations t...

This paper discusses the importance of tourism and event tourism in Cheltenham, England and the problems associated with the recent foot and mouth disaster in the UK for the festival organisers and local community. The cancellation of the 2001 Cheltenham Festival illustrates the importance of the Festival for the local economy and has raised a numb...

Purpose – Despite the proliferation of the governance concept in the broader academic literature, there is little agreement on definitions, scope and what actually constitutes governance. This is arguably due to the fact that empirical research on the topic, with some exceptions, is generally limited to case studies without use of any common concep...