WU, Guan-MingCHU, Chen-JinGUAN, Si-QiZHU, Zi-MuXU, Yu-Hua2024-04-262024-04-262022https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/49432<p>Chenjin Chu is a senior student at the HNU-ASU Joint International Tourism College of Hainan University, in Hainan, China. Her major is Tourism Development and Management. She has published a paper on Marketing Circles. Her research interests include ethnic village tourism, tourism enterprises and hotel management.</p> <p>Siqi Guan is a senior student at the HNU-ASU Joint International Tourism College of Hainan University, in Hainan, China. She majors in Tourism Development and Management. She has published a paper on Annals of Leisure Research . Her research interests include regenerative tourism in COVID, feminisms and marketing.</p> <p>Guanming Wu is a senior student at the HNU-ASU Joint International Tourism College of Hainan University, in Hainan, China. His major is Tourism Development and Management. His research interests generativity and heritage tourism and DMO marketing.</p> <p>Zimu Zhu is a senior student at the HNU-ASU Joint International Tourism College of Hainan University, in Hainan, China. Her major is Tourism Development and Management. Her research interests include rural tourism and tourism in COVID.</p> <p>Yu-Hua (Melody) Xu, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on destination planning, sharing economy, and community resilience. She is dedicated to finding sustainable solutions for destinations and communities in face of various turbulence and crises.</p>Abstract: Since 2020, COVID-19 pandemic has not only exerted a serious influence on global tourism industry but also dampened tourists' travel intention. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the factors impacting people's travel intention and spur their psychological resilience in domestic tourism during post-COVID-19 crisis. This study applied a novel psychological factor (i.e. psychological distance) to tourist behavior research and employed structural equation model (SEM) to explore how psychological distance affects tourists' travel intention in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological distance refers to the subjective distance of an event when it is close to or far from a perceiver, and this concept contains four dimensions: temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distances. The results revealed that social distance and temporal distance were negatively correlated with tourists' travel intention towards Sanya City, whereas spatial distance was not related to tourists' travel intention. More interestingly, perceived safety played a significant mediating role in the relationship between social distance, temporal distance, spacial distance, and people's intention to visit Sanya City. These findings greatly contributed to the empirical research on the relationship between psychological distance and tourists' travel intention. Meanwhile, some practical strategies were provided for tourism managers and marketers to reduce people's travel anxiety and encourage their participation in tourist activities in the post-pandemic era. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; psychological distance; perceived safety; travel intention; structural equation model (SEM)event