Understanding Tourism Resilience amid COVID-19 in China from An Agency Perspective The Case of Hainan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most influential challenges of the 21st century. It has led to a great concern about the security of human mobility. Unlike other crises or disasters in the past, COVID-19 has generated profound social and economic impacts. The tourism industry, in particular, whose development and prosperity are strongly contingent on human mobility, has been significantly hit by the COVID-19 shock. It is thus particularly important to take a closer look at the resilience of tourism. This study takes the case of Hainan a well-known tourism region to analyze how tourism economies respond and cope with the COVID-19 crisis. In China, it is well documented that strong top-down government measures and intervention policies are crucial and irreplaceable, which can timely enable the resilience of the whole tourism industry during the pandemic. Besides the presence of multi-scalar strong government agencies, this paper, therefore, takes a step further to scrutinize how other actors (e.g tourism firms) work with state actors to respond and adapt to COVID-19. This study could be useful or serves as a reference for further researchers to explore the regional economic resilience issue under COVID-19 in China and also in other developing economies. It will also offer possible directions for future research agendas in the area.