Intervention analysis of SARS on Japanese tourism demand for Taiwan

Abstract

Japan was Asia’s leading generator of international tourism in the 1980s and 1990s. Japanese tourists make up over 30% of all international tourists to Taiwan and they have been the highest ranking tourist source market since the early stages of the island’s tourism development in the 1970s. However, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, the most catastrophic disaster in the past 100 years in Taiwan, had a huge impact on Japanese inbound tourism to the island. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how Japanese inbound arrivals have been affected by the SARS outbreak. A SARIMA with intervention model is used to assess the impact of the epidemic on inbound tourism from Japan to Taiwan in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak. The empirical results indicated that inbound tourism from Japan was devastated by the crisis, particularly during the first 5 months after the SARS outbreak. This study provides some helpful insight for the tourism industry to respond to the impact of exogenous shock.