Risk and Uncertainty in Travel Decision-Making: Tourist and Destination Perspective

Abstract

Many studies on risk and destination choice focus on specific destinations or tourist characteristics in an isolated way, resulting in a fragmented nature in research results without a comprehensive understanding. Therefore, an integrated research approach is applied using tourists’ self-assessments of risk and uncertainty in travel decision-making, as well as key characteristics of destinations at hypothetical and realistic stages of the destination choice process. The study uses data collected from a survey on German tourists’ destination choice behavior. The results show that high educational levels and high travel frequencies are distinct characteristics of risk-affine tourists, while higher age groups are more dominant in risk- and uncertainty-averse tourist types. Tourists with varying attitudes toward risk and uncertainty in travel decision-making differ strongly with respect to ideal destinations initially, but choose rather similar destinations when it comes to the final destination choice.