Analysis of the Safety Factors for Event Visitors: '99 Hanam Environmental Expo in Korea

摘要

Global tourism has increased throughout the 1990s, with the biggest surge occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. Long-distance travel is also increasing, and at a rate faster than the global average. Event tourism is appearing as the powerful method in the fierce competition around the tourism industry. As the economic benefits of event tourism, a number of mega-events can reduce tourism outflows from the host country by as much as half, increase inflow by a similar proportion and eventually generate tourist expenditure (Vanhove and Witt, 1987). From above viewpoint, international events like '99 Hanam Environment Expo have been held annually in Korea since 1991 in which the local government system started. The main roles of event are to enhance the image of communities and attract tourists (Kotler and Haider and Rein, 1993), to strengthen destination attractiveness as 'drawing power' (Mill and Morrison, 1985), and so on. Focused on the destination image, the research (Sirakaya and Sheppard and McLellan, 1997) about the effect of perceived safety at a potential vacation destination, showed that destination marketers, travel agents, and hospitality industry members should be concerned with improving their images when such images are negative with regard to safety. An economic loss from accidents caused by ignoring safety can be classified as a direct cost and indirect (hidden) cost. The original Heinrich's research resulting in the 4 to 1 ratios for indirect to direct costs was made in 1926 (Heinrich and Peterson and Roos, 1980). This paper investigated the safety factors considered by visitors of '99 Hanam Environment Expo and analyzed the correlation between the safety factors and the demographic characteristics of the visitors.