The impact of COVID-19 on tourism in Malaysia

Abstract

In 2020, the outbreaks of the COVID-19 pandemic as a global emergency of international concern had an unprecedented impact on the tourism industry worldwide. Domestic tourism offers a significant opportunity to support the tourism sector for the recovery of the tourism industry. However, few studies have paid attention to how COVID-19 affects domestic tourists' behaviour in Malaysia. The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the risk perception of COVID-19 impact on tourists' travel intentions in Malaysia based on the theory of planned behaviour. Additionally, risk perception was integrated as the additional variable to measure the travel intentions in the conceptual model. This study uses primary data collected from October 2020 to December 2020 to examine the variables that could influence the tourist's travel intentions over two different time points, namely before and during the OCIVID-19 pandemic, and covers most of the data in the COVID-affected 2020. In this study, the empirical findings confirm the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and travel intentions toward domestic travel. The findings also indicated that gender significantly impacts tourists' attitudes, norms, behavioural control, and travel intentions toward domestic travel before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical and practical implications of the theory of planned behaviour, together with the empirical findings, have been addressed in the context of tourism to contribute to the recovery of the domestic tourism industry.