Terrorism and inbound tourism: Does immigration have a moderating effect?

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of terrorism on bilateral tourism flows within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It also examines the moderation effect of immigration in the destination country on the terrorism–tourism relationship. The results obtained from the estimated gravity models show that after reaching a certain threshold, terrorism negatively impacts tourist arrivals. This relation seems to be moderated by the share of immigrants in the country of destination: when the share of immigrants in a country is relatively high, the positive impact of immigration on tourist arrivals would counterbalance the adverse impact of terrorism on tourist arrivals.