Exploring Residents’ Roles as Risk Insiders in Tourism Crisis Management

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore residents’ roles as risk insiders in tourism crisis management. Particularly, this study used the recent event of Red Tides in Florida as the context and surveyed 969 potential visitors and 460 Florida residents. The preliminary findings indicated that visitors tend to rely on residents for risk related information. Guided by the social identity theory, this study further investigated the main drivers of Florida residents’ information-sharing behavior. The results indicated that both subjective knowledge and social identity influenced residents’ willingness to share risk information with visitors and their actual behavior. Based on the findings, this study further discussed a new research direction that involves residents in tourism crisis management. This study also offers practical implications on how to encourage residents to participate in the information-exchange process in tourism crisis management.