Examining The Role of Industry Compliance Towards Local Tourists’ Risk Perception and Their Travel Intention During COVID-19 Crisis in Malaysia

Abstract

Industry Compliance has become one of the criteria in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As evident from the recent pandemic, the government and other related stakeholders have been greatly affected from every aspect, and the tourism industry is no exception. Therefore, safety measures such as social distancing policies and travel movement bans had also been imposed during the national crisis. Previous studies on compliance found that industry compliance would be beneficial in mitigating the crisis impact. Therefore, this study examines the role of industry compliance towards local tourists’ risk perception and travel intention during the COVID-19 crisis in Malaysia. Besides, the variable of risk perception and travel intention is included in this study, giving a significant gap for the tourism field, and providing the relationship between variables. The sub-dimension of cognitive and affective risk perception is identified and proposed under the dimension of risk perception to create more exploration associated with tourists’ behaviour. For this study, regression analysis was conducted to examine the impacts of tourists’ risk perception towards travel intention in Malaysia, while moderation analysis includes the industry compliance variable as the moderator between risk perception and travel intention. The data shows that risk perception significantly affects travel intention, and the variable of cognitive and risk perception and industry compliance is investigated as the moderator between risk perception and travel intention. Hence, the findings of this study are predicted to improve the tourists’ safety and their travel intention on tourists’ destinations and inject industry compliance as the guidelines for the tourism industry. This study is also expected to give contribution for tourism studies contribute to tourism studies that can be utilised, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.