Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic represents the main threat constraining travel in the current times. There are, however, other threats jeopardising tourism, amongst which belongs also terrorism.
Indeed, terrorism will not be eradicated by the pandemic, quite the contrary. Hence, to understand tourists' views on and reactions to terrorism should be crucial knowledge for the tourism industry.
It is well established that terrorism has in most instances adverse effects on tourism demand. This can be attributed to psychological effects terrorism produces.
To date, nevertheless, we know very little about on-site tourists' psychological responses to terrorism and micro-destination-related factors including antiterrorism measures affecting these responses. Therefore, the aim of the study is to evaluate urban tourists' cognitive and emotional responses to terrorism while focusing on factors affecting these responses.
Fear-arousing walking interviews were employed to collect data which were analysed using framework analysis. The interviews (n=24) were conducted with a rather young (age<40), gender-balanced, and international sample of tourists in the city centre of Munich, Germany.
Many participants self-reported the absence of fear of terrorism. However, all participants judged a terrorist attack to be possible within the city centre.
The perceived probability of an attack, nonetheless, varied among participants and sites. The probability was considered to be the highest in the main city square, shopping street, and train station.
In contrast, religious places and a small street next to police HQ were rated as sites with the lowest probability. The differences may be explained by the identified micro-destination-related factors (12).
The amount of people and visible security measures seems to represent the most important factors since they affected psychological responses of all participants. Additionally, other factors such as the way how terrorism is comprehended by participants were observed to also have effects on their psychological responses.
Theoretical and managerial implications will be discussed.