The impact of haze crisis on the tourist's receipts in the upper Northern, Thailand

Abstract

This study focuses on The Impact of Haze Crisis on Tourist Receipts in the Upper Northern, Thailand. The study employs tourism receipts from two groups of visitors: domestic tourists and international tourists. China, Malaysia, Russia, Japan, and Korea, represent the international tourists in this study. The determinant variables are considered as following the Particulate matter (PM10), consumer price index, consumer confidence index, exchange rate, and unemployment rate. The monthly data covered from January 2015 to December 2020 will be used in this study, totaling 72 observations. There are two main objectives that are focused upon. First, it aims to explain the time varying impact of haze crisis on Thai domestic tourist’s receipts in the upper northern of Thailand. Second, to explain the time varying impact of haze crisis on Thai international tourist’s receipts in the upper northern of Thailand. The findings showed that, the coefficient provides a different sign and trend for domestic and international tourists. One possible reason for the provinces that provide a positive or constant trend is lack of Government reports about the hazard of haze problem in northern Thailand, whereas government concern about the Northern economy as the most of revenue comes from the tourism sector. Then, the haze crisis might not affect on tourists that have no information about this problem. Another reason is that the haze crisis might not affect tourists’ receipts in the short run. Tourists who have already made their plans to visit upper northern Thailand are less likely to change them due to the haze crisis. In other words, tourists might be more concerned about the haze problem on their traveling plans through time. The result can be concluded that domestic, Chinese, Korean and Malaysian tourists might be more concerned about traveling to less visited destinations than scenery towns during haze crisis. On the other hand, Russian tourists generate a negative effect of haze crisis in scenery towns. In addition, this finding supports the non-Asians have highly positive attitudes towards natural environmental responsibility. As the Russian tourist’s receipt provides the largest negative effect than other countries. The dynamic linear model by Bayesian estimated is recommended to apply in further research. This method can be used to solving in the problem of overestimation and provides a correct distribution. Additionally, the idea of Kalman filter in this model can be used to deal with the problem of starting a value in the result. The government should pay attention to haze pollution, which damages tourist receipts in the long run. Additionally, Thai authorities should provide effective measures to control air pollution and improve air quality. Finally, policymakers should take effective measures to recover the potential damage to the destination’s brand and image that might be caused by air pollution.