“Nothing Can Stop Me!” Perceived Risk and Travel Intention Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Study of Wuhan and Sapporo

The global tourism industry has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic due to strict travel restrictions imposed by most countries. In order to achieve a swift post-pandemic recovery, it is important to understand what psychological obstacles people would face when making travel decisions. Building upon the dual-route theory of information processing, this study examined and compared how the perceived risk of COVID-19 would affect people’s travel intentions in the Japanese city of Sapporo and the Chinese city of Wuhan through two rounds of data collection. While both cities were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic at an early stage, the cumulative numbers of confirmed human cases and the levels of intervention adopted were largely different. Results from the present study showed that risk perception of COVID-19 had a negative effect on people’s travel intentions in Sapporo. However, no significant effect of COVID-19 perception could be observed in post-lockdown Wuhan. Meanwhile, although the dual-route structure of information processing was obtained in Sapporo and post-lockdown Wuhan, neither routes seemed to predict the perceived risk of COVID-19 in Wuhan when lockdown restrictions were still in place. Several theoretical and practical implications concerning the results are discussed in this study.