Can International Students’ Risk Perception and Place Image Create an Advantage in Safeguarding Place Loyalty in Post-COVID-19 Tourism?

Abstract

International students enrolled in the long term are considered habitual residents. They act as hosts to their friends and relatives, generating word-of-mouth recommendations and revisiting the host country. In order to facilitate inbound tourism in post-COVID-19 tourism, it is necessary to understand their risk perception, place image, and loyalty and provide meaningful insights for tourism markets. This study explores how social and personal risk perception of COVID-19 and cognitive and affective place image explain place loyalty. International students for degree programs comprised the sample population for this study. Findings revealed that social risk perception negatively shapes cognitive and affective place image, while personal risk perception only explains affective place image. Both cognitive and affective place image significantly affects place loyalty and mediates between social risk perception and place loyalty. The research provides new evidence on the risk perception of COVID-19, showing that internal factors such as social and personal risk perception may cause somewhat different results contrary to previous studies. Although gender moderates the relationship between cognitive place image and loyalty, the influence of gender on the theoretical and empirical relationships between risk perception, place image, and loyalty is not significant for international students. Implications for theory and practice, limitations, and future studies are discussed.