Covid-19 vaccines, rules, deaths, and tourism recovery

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2022.103424Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A higher vaccination rate alone is not accompanied by a higher tourism recovery.

  • Death rate dampens tourism recovery significantly in developed economies.

  • Stringency restrictions hinder tourism recovery.

  • Lower risk of infection and death is necessary for the tourism industry to rebound.

Abstract

This study explores whether vaccination coverage, social distancing rules, and COVID-19 death rate affect tourism recovery using data from 249 countries/territories. We used panel data regression techniques—namely Fixed-effects, Hausman-Taylor, and Instrumental Variables regressions for the empirical analysis. Results show that a higher vaccination coverage is not necessarily accompanied by a higher tourism recovery. Similarly, a higher level of stringency restriction hinders tourism recovery. Results also indicate that a lower death rate helps to promote tourism recovery in developed economies. These results suggest that vaccination coverage alone is not the magic bullet for restarting the tourism industry. Policymakers should consider a mix of effective vaccination administration accompanied by the use of therapeutics to lower the COVID-19 death rate.

Keywords

Vaccination coverage
Stringency restrictions
COVID-19 death rate
Tourism recovery
Pandemic

Data availability

The authors do not have permission to share data.

Cited by (0)

Luke Okafor is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. His research interests lie at the intersection of international trade, tourism economics, development process, and industrial organization with a specific focus on how firms and industries respond to globalization and shocks.

Eric Yan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research interests include household welfare optimization, applied econometrics, and economic modelling.

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