Who are vulnerable in a tourism crisis? A tourism employment vulnerability analysis for the COVID-19 management
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ABSTRACT: Providing targeted support to people who are mostly impacted financially is critical in managing the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, governments face the challenge of pinpointing vulnerable workers. Building upon the multi-regional input-output model and a high-resolution employment profile, this research develops a new analytical model to recognize the vulnerable population in a crisis by identifying who they are, where they work and what sector they work for. The model was applied to Indonesia to assess tourism losses and found four regional hotspots where the employment vulnerability of women, youth and low-education workers was more than five times higher than the national average. Findings demonstrated that this model could assist with rapid and efficient targeted support for crisis management in the short term and continued investment for an equitable disaster recovery in the future.
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted tourism and leisure activities worldwide, especially in the hospitality sector. This paper has a conceptual and empirical motivation based on two objectives. First, it identifies several of the primary factors behind the vulnerability of tourism to COVID-19 (tourism dependency, market structure, the supply of rural accommodation, and health incidence of the pandemic). Second, it constructs a vulnerability index to COVID-19 using Spain and its 50 provinces as case. The main results obtained indicate that tourism to the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the provinces of the Mediterranean coast, and Madrid, in which the state capital is located, present higher vulnerability to COVID-19, yet with different underlying factors. Our methodology and results are of interest to policymakers in terms of the short- and medium-term strategic policies that can be employed to mitigate current and future shocks.
Project description:Abstract This paper investigates the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on firms’ performance and financial vulnerability. Exploiting longitudinal firm-level data from the World Bank’s “Enterprise Surveys follow-up on COVID-19” for 20 European countries, we assess whether green management quality and pre-pandemic credit access difficulties affect firms’ ability to withstand the negative impact of the pandemic. Our results indicate that green firms are more resilient to the pandemic shock. In particular, the likelihood of pandemic-induced drops in sales and liquidity significantly decreases as the quality of green management improves. Conversely, prior financing constraints strongly exacerbate the pandemic’s impact on firms’ performance and amplify liquidity stress and financing problems. Credit-constrained enterprises are not only more likely to experience liquidity shortages and repayment problems, but they also face higher difficulties in accessing bank financing. The COVID-19 crisis has also hampered the beneficial role that green management exerted on access to credit in the pre-pandemic period. During the pandemic, firms with sound environmental management practices do not benefit from improved access to finance and have a lower demand for credit, possibly suggesting a slowdown in their green investment activities. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11187-023-00759-1. Green firms are more resilient to the COVID-19 shock, while prior credit access difficulties strongly exacerbate the pandemic’s impact on businesses. Using data on firms from 20 European countries, we find that enterprises with sound environmental management practices have a lower probability of pandemic-induced reductions in sales and liquidity. Pre-pandemic financing constraints significantly impair firms’ economic and financial performance and increase difficulties in accessing bank credit during the COVID-19 crisis. Our results suggest that public policies, aimed at encouraging firms’ environmentally sustainable behaviours and at supporting their access to credit, may contribute to strengthen the resilience of the economic system to unexpected shocks and favour the transition to a sustainable economy. Furthermore, the awareness of the competitive advantages offered by eco-sustainable practices may represent an incentive form firms to improve their environmental management quality and increase investment in green technologies. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11187-023-00759-1.
Project description:This paper studies networking in rural tourism from a gender perspective comparing pre and post Covid period. The empirical study consisted of a questionnaire answered by 154 tourism promoters. Results showed a higher percentage of promoters belonging to an association during the Covid-19. There was a link between receiving training and belonging to an association and a significant relationship between participation in associations and receiving public funds, this relationship being found more among male promoters. On the other hand, a higher score was given by women for the advantages of networking, and mainly for the following: ‘Simplifies the management of booking’. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11628-022-00503-x.
Project description:The world of work is facing an ongoing pandemic and an economic downturn with severe effects worldwide. Workers trapped in precarious employment (PE), both formal and informal, are among those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we call attention to at least 5 critical ways that the consequences of the crisis among workers in PE will be felt globally: (a) PE will increase, (b) workers in PE will become more precarious, (c) workers in PE will face unemployment without being officially laid off, (d) workers in PE will be exposed to serious stressors and dramatic life changes that may lead to a rise in diseases of despair, and (e) PE might be a factor in deterring the control of or in generating new COVID-19 outbreaks. We conclude that what we really need is a new social contract, where the work of all workers is recognized and protected with adequate job contracts, employment security, and social protection in a new economy, both during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the vulnerability of tourism workers, but no detailed job loss figures are available that links tourism vulnerability with income inequality. This study evaluates how reduced international tourism consumption affects tourism employment and their income loss potential for 132 countries. This analysis shows that higher proportions of female (9.6%) and youth (10.1%) experienced unemployment whilst they were paid significantly less because they worked in tourism (−5%) and if they were women (−23%). Variations in policy support and pre-existing economic condition further created significant disparities on lost-income subsidies across countries. With the unequal financial burden across groups, income and regions, the collapse of international travel exacerbates short-term income inequality within and between countries.
Project description:While social media are effective means of communicating with adverse customer emotions during a crisis, it remains unclear how tourism organisations can respond to pandemic crisis on social media to prevent negative aftermaths. Using a set-theoretical approach, we investigate how COVID-19 response strategies and linguistic cues of responses are intertwined to evoke positive emotions among consumers. This study entails a qualitative content analysis of tourism organisations' COVID-19 announcements and a social media analytics approach that captures consumers' emotional reactions to these announcements via their Twitter replies. Our results extend some well-established findings in the tourism crisis literature by suggesting that combining innovative response strategy, argument quality, and assertive language can reinforce positive emotions during the COVID-19 crisis. Taking organisational characteristics into consideration, we suggest that young established hotels utilise innovative response strategies, whereas retrenchment response strategies for all types of restaurants should be avoided during the COVID-19 crisis.
Project description:This study aims at providing new insights into poverty, vulnerability, and their correlates in Mozambique, applying synthetic panels techniques and expanding on earlier analyses. Our results suggest that there is a high degree of poverty immobility, especially in rural areas in the northern and central regions and for low-educated people. Even nonpoor households are at a high risk to vulnerability, and this risk does not differ much for households in urban/rural areas or in different regions or with different education levels. We also observe that a large portion of the population remains in or out of poverty over the entire year, with a higher percentage of individuals moving into poverty between the dry and the rainy seasons and a nonnegligible proportion of vulnerable people not managing to revert to nonpoverty in the subsequent dry season. Overall, these findings are highly relevant for designing anti-poverty policies and strategies, as they provide information on intra-year shocks and on some of the characteristics related to upward and downward mobility over longer time spans, also with regard to the recent Covid-19 and other recent shocks suffered by the country.
Project description:This study examines the influence of domestic tourism on economic vulnerability index (EVI). Domestic tourism spending has a significant effect in reducing EVI. These results are consistent with two sub-indices of EVI (shock index and exposure index). Interestingly, it is found that: (i) this impact is consistent in low- and lower-middle-income countries, while domestic tourism has a non-significantly effect in upper-middle and high-income countries of increasing EVI; (ii) these results are consistent in the long-run; and (iii) the impact of domestic tourism is consistent in both the 2002-2007 and 2008-2012 periods, but is statistically non-significant in the 2013-2017 period. Notably, we find that domestic tourism spending has a U-shape effect on EVI; while international tourism has an increasing effect.
Project description:Even though academic attention has been paid on the tourism-memory nexus, the concept of forgetfulness in tourism has been largely overlooked and remains unexplored. The aim of this research note is to introduce the concept of forgetfulness alongside memory within tourism scholarship to discuss the way in which it may be integrated with future research. In so doing, the discussion focused on a tourist crisis context as tourists' post-crisis behaviour often reflects forgetfulness as evidenced by their travel resumption patterns. Overall, by linking the concepts of forgetfulness and tourism, this research note contributes to knowledge advancement on tourism crises by shifting attention away from risk perceptions towards an understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes influencing tourist behaviour. The research note also illuminates understanding of how crises are forgotten; hence, contributes to the improvement of crisis management strategies. The research note concludes by proposing an agenda for future research.