The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on intra- and inter-regional domestic travel: Evidence from Spain
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Marcos Álvarez-Díaz [1] ; José María Chamorro-Rivas [1] ; Manuel González-Gómez [1] ; María Soledad Otero-Giráldez [1]
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[1] Universidade de Vigo
Universidade de Vigo
Vigo, España
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- Localización: Tourism economics: the business and finance of tourism and recreation, ISSN 1354-8166, Vol. 30, Nº. Extra 4, 2024 (Ejemplar dedicado a: IATE 2022 Conference), págs. 1039-1061
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This study empirically compares domestic tourists’ behavior before and after the Covid-19 outbreak. Specifically, official data are used to characterize the travel behavior of residents in Spain who traveled through this country for reasons of leisure, recreation, and vacations in 2019 and 2020. A discrete choice model is employed to unravel the main variables that influence the decision of being an inter-regional traveler. The bootstrap p-value method is used to detect significant changes in the marginal effect of the different variables after the Covid-19 outbreak. The estimation results demonstrate the following: (i) domestic inter- and intra-regional travelers have significant differences and, therefore, policy-makers should not design and implement “one size fits all” policies for domestic tourism; (ii) in addition to socio-economic factors, the regional push-pull factors (e.g., weather) and trip-related characteristics (e.g., type of accommodation) are also important in explaining inter-regional travel decisions; (iii) a high number of Covid-19 infections in the region of origin increases the probability of traveling inter-regionally; and (iv) the Covid-19 outbreak has caused an abrupt shift in domestic travelers’ profiles.
