HEALTH SECURITY PERCEPTIONS AND LENGTH OF STAY

Abstract

The health risks associated with COVID-19 have increased tourists’ safety concerns when traveling. We analyze the linkages between tourists’ length of stay and their perceptions about health security in different public venues at the destination: the street, bars and cafes, restaurants, the chosen accommodation, the beach, and shops and stores. We use survey data collected from tourists to a nature-based region (Asturias) in Northern Spain in the summer of 2020 as our case study. Based on separate linear regressions, we examine how health security perceptions vary with the length of the stay across different public venues. In doing so, we control for a wide set of sociodemographic and trip-related characteristics. We find evidence of a consistent non-linear negative relationship between the length of the stay and the perceived health security in these public venues. We also document that hotel guests have lower health security perceptions, both at the hotels themselves and other public venues. This is the first work that explores how health security perceptions in different public domains deteriorate with the tourists’ length of stay.