Monitoring the impacts of tourism-based social media, risk perception and fear on tourist’s attitude and revisiting behaviour in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic

This research aims to explore the impact of perceived risk, fear and social media on tourist’s attitude, engagement, and revisit intention in COVID-19 pandemic situation. The results of PLS-SEM indicate that fear of COVID-19 and perceived risk has a significant negative impact on attitude towards travelling. Similarly, findings show that perceived risk has a significant negative effect, and social media has a significant positive effect on customer brand engagement during COVID-19 outbreak. Results also reveal that customer engagement and attitude have positive effects on both brand co-creation and revisit intention. The insights acquired from this research offers a mechanism behind fear/perceived risk and social media-based brand engagement, attitude, co-creation and revisit intention in pandemic situation and implications for tourism-reliant destinations to build recovery-strategies/tactics in coping with the impact of pandemics to re-store tourism.