Two Sides of a Coin: A Crisis Response Perspective on Tourist Community Participation in a Post-Disaster Environment

This study investigates the attitudes and behavioural intentions of community crisis response and tourism community participation in tourist destinations after the occurrence of a disaster. Further, we built a conceptual model of perceived community participation benefit, community attachment, community resilience, and crisis response and community participation intention and measured it using 556 samples surveyed after the Wenchuan earthquake, China. The results indicated that benefit perception, community attachment, and community resilience have a positive effect on crisis response and community participation. The study further reveals that the local tourism community gradually transforms the negative aspects of terrible disasters into development opportunities. Our case study particularly focuses on the initiative shown by and positive participation of the tourist community in the aforementioned transformation. The study proposes the Attachment, Benefit, and Capability framework of tourist community participation based on the crisis response perspective and expands the boundaries of tourist community participation research. The study has theoretical and practical significance, puts forward relevant countermeasures, and has significant implications.