Personality Traits That Affect Travel Intentions during Pandemic COVID-19: The Case Study of Serbia

Jelena Tepavčević,Milan Bradić,Ivana Blešić,Vuk Garača,Dobrila Lukić,Svetlana Vukosav,Tamara Gajić,Marko D Petrović

doi:10.3390/su132212845

Abstract

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has enormous effects on peoples’ lives and on the global economy. The outbreak and effects of COVID-19 have resulted in fears, concerns, and anxiety among people all around the world. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the fear of COVID-19, travel anxiety, and travel intention among residents in Serbia. In addition to the above, the aim of the study was to examine the impact of personality traits on the fear of COVID-19, travel anxiety, and travel intentions. To enhance the understanding of the relationship between the mentioned variables, this study proposes a research model based on the use of measurement scales from the existing studies to develop the questionnaire. The standard paper-and-pen survey was used for data collection from the respondents from Serbia. The total sample include 987 respondents. It was determined that Travel intention was negatively influenced by Neuroticism and Conscientiousness, but positively by Extroversion and Openness. The supposed Agreeableness did not have a significant effect on Travel intention. This study contributes to understanding the respondents’ behavior during pandemic of COVID-19, and their responses to the crisis according to their personality traits might have practical implications in the travel sector.

Highlights

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has been spreading throughout China and worldwide; the pandemic danger has threatened lives due to infection, but has brought about enormous psychological tension [1]
BSc degree (47.5%), and are married (45.8%). When it comes to traveling during COVID-19, 64.8% said that they did not travel during the pandemic (Table 1)
It was expected to find a negative connection between Fear of COVID-19 and Travel intention, the results show no notable connection between these two variables

Summary

Introduction

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has been spreading throughout China and worldwide; the pandemic danger has threatened lives due to infection, but has brought about enormous psychological tension [1]. With the aim to protect the population and prevent the spread of the pandemic, drastic measures were taken by every country in the world. All the countries closed schools, borders, and stopped production and trade. These changes had effects on all the areas of economy, including the tourism industry [5,7,8]. There are too many ways in which pandemics can affect tourism and hospitality industry. Restrictions that are related to travel have a negative impact on economy in general, on the tourism and hospitality industry

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Discussion

Conclusion