Perceived risks of tourism in Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to determine tourists’ perceived risks of Bangladesh. The study examined survey data of 320 tourists, of whom 6.3% are international tourists and the remaining 93.7% are domestic tourists who stayed in Chattogram in Bangladesh and visited Cox’s Bazar, Saint Martin, Dhaka and Sylhet. Main statistical tools were employed in the analysis, namely exploratory factor analysis (principal component analysis), confirmatory factor analysis, binary logistic regression, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and ordinal logistic. The results diagnosed six dimensions of tourists’ perceived risk on Bangladesh, namely financial and communication risk, political instability and natural risk, health and time risk, physical risk, social risk and psychological risk. The results also showed that a good number of individual features like age, type of tourist, purpose of visit and budget of travel affected perception of travel risk. The study also reported that tourists followed both behavioural modification of consumption and information search as risk reduction strategies where the usage of these strategies relied on the various types of risk that tourists’ perceived. The study concluded that tourism planners should focus on which risks might cause stress among tourists, an awareness that should also inform marketing strategies.