An Exploratory Study of Pandemic-Restricted Travel—A New Form of Travel Pattern on the during- and Post-COVID-19 Era

This study introduces a new travel pattern “pandemic-restricted travel” that exists from COVID-19 based on prospect theory. The purpose of this study is to incorporate the motivation to travel and constraint to normal travel to predict tourists’ intention to continue visiting other alternative destinations due to COVID-19 restrictions. This study first generated the items of motivation to travel and constraints to normal travel from a focus group interview with 15 travel industry professionals in December 2020 in Zhuhai. Then, an online survey collected data from 416 respondents in the Greater Bay Area of China from January to February 2021. The results of exploratory factor analysis using SPSS identified two factors of motivation to travel (leisure and exploration) and two factors of favourable constraints to normal travel (policy restriction and perceived risk). The results of partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) indicated that these four factors positively influence satisfaction but only leisure and exploration factors positively influence the intention of continuous pandemic-restricted travel. Among the four factors, leisure has the strongest impact on both satisfaction and intention of continue travelling. The results also revealed that satisfaction fully mediates the effects of two constraint factors and partially mediates the effects of two motivation factors on the intention of continuous pandemic-restricted travel. Implications for researchers and governments for pandemic-restricted travel during and in the post-COVID-19 era are then discussed.