Post-earthquake tourism dynamics

There is little quantitative research on tourist behaviour following major seismic events.

This study uses presently untapped Big Data (e.g. eftpos, credit card, port of arrival) to model tourist behaviours following the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence.  The analysis includes changes in itinerary and visitor expenditure, and the cascading (flow-on) impacts throughout New Zealand. We also partnered with Christchurch Canterbury Tourism to develop the story of tourism response and recovery including the key recovery marketing and communication initiatives that were employed. 

Our findings serve as an evidence-base for developing scalable and transferable causal systems models of tourism market dynamics following a seismic event, applicable to a broad range of tourism markets and hazard scenarios. Specifically, the findings have been adapted to create a module in MERIT (Measuring the Economics of Resilient Infrastructure Tool) so that tourism demand impacts can be reflected in economic impact modelling.