to explain why life satisfaction was not significantly affected by the earthquake.
At the destination level psychosocial issues during the Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand have been well documented (Becker et al., 2019). In a review of 31 papers on the psychological impacts of the Canterbury earthquakes on mental health, Beaglehole et al. (2019) found that the mental health of people was affected and strategies needed to be implemented to enable communities to respond to psychological distress. The Canterbury well-being survey which has been ongoing since the initial earthquake, specifically indicated that aftershocks were a major source of anxiety in the greater Christchurch population, with the worst anxiety levels occurring approximately 18 months after the initial mainshock (Morgan et al., 2015). In helping to facilitate community recovery, strategies included community access to free counselling, extended general practice consultations and health promoting initiatives (Beaglehole et al., 2019). The authors argue that these facilities and initiatives had the possible effect of lowering the adverse consequences of the earthquakes on mental health. In addition, social relationships have been found to be the strongest predictor of subjective well-being following disasters (Diener & Seligman, 2002). This issue is discussed in more depth below in relation to earthquakes and resilience.
The existence of prolonged aftershocks that result in communities going through periods of impact, response and recovery several times has not received significant attention in the emergency and disaster management literature (Becker et al., 2019), nor in terms of the effects on tourism (Mazzocchi & Montini, 2001; Mazzoni et al., 2018). As a result, many disaster management models, including those in tourism, tend to be relatively static. Another significant omission in these models is that issues of self-efficacy, empowerment, optimism, innovative thinking, selfesteem, agency, decision making and perceptions are often considered in isolation from business and physical impacts in terms of understanding how people cope with shock, disturbances and stressors (Brown & Westaway, 2011). Increasingly, emphasis needs to be placed in these models on the adaptation of individuals, organizations and communities to changed circumstances, and therefore the idea of bouncing back to a pre-earthquake reality, which is contested in the resilience literature as will be discussed later, should be viewed through a resilience thinking lens (Hall et al., 2016; Hall et al., 2018). These models often also ignore that some individuals and communities can have a ‘fresh start mindset’, which is the belief that people can make a new start, get a new beginning, and chart a new course in life, regardless of past or present circumstances (Price et al., 2018). This mindset is related to the ability of individuals to choose to reinvent themselves by initiating new goals and adopting new lifestyles to create different futures.
To this end, disaster management and recovery models, and the role of tourism within them, should explicitly account for psychosocial recovery and building resilience. Psychosocial recovery has linkages to the psychological resilience of community members and emotional attachment to places that contribute to psychosocial recovery and which is also very significant in the tourism literature as well, both in terms of residents of a destination as well as visitors (Amsden et al., 2010; Kamani-Fard et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2019). The positive psychology literature abounds with studies arguing that psychological resilience allows individuals to cope with adversity and positively adapt to a changed reality (Kimhi, 2016; Hall et al., 2018). A high level of community resilience enhances individual’s coping during stressful situations and is therefore instrumental in faster post-stress recovery (Sherrieb et al., 2010; Chowdhury et al., 2019). Indeed, as Hall et al. (2018: 155) concluded
A resilient community, organisation or destination requires strong interconnectivity. This is similar to individual resilience which is much dependent on formal and informal relationships (Biggs et al., 2012). Nevertheless, social capital requires skilful investment and management for accumulation for use in times of need (Reich, 2006). Therefore, the development of trust between actors and actor engagement and learning are important for resilience (Adger, 2000), especially because when actors trust one another there is an increased likelihood of working towards common goals and outside everyday silos (Hall, 2008). From a tourism perspective, this should not be regarded as a surprising observation; rather it should be standard tourism planning and business practice. Perhaps, as in many things, the focus needs to be not so much on finding new ways to do things but on making sure that the strategies that we know work and helping to ensure that tourism businesses, employees and destinations survive and grow: collaboration; providing a decent standard of living and quality of life for employees and managers; developing trust and talking between actors; and caring about customers, staff and the community.
Earthquakes and Impacts on the Tourism System
Earthquakes have profound effects on all parts of the tourism system. However, the literature examining how tourist destinations, businesses and individuals prepare for, cope, and adjust to disasters is limited (Khazai et al., 2018) and, arguably, that on tourist generating regions, transit regions and competitor destinations and attractions, as well as the tourists themselves, even more so. The focus of earthquake and tourism research tends to be at the destination level. In one sense this is not surprising given that the vulnerability of the tourism industry, at the destination scale, is substantially related to perceptions of safety, functioning infrastructure and visitor accessibility and mobility (Laws & Prideaux, 2005; Hall et al., 2018), all of which can be severely impacted by earthquakes. This perhaps explains the recent effort of many destinations to develop a disaster management plan for the tourism industry, which is vital so that negative impacts can be reduced and recovery time for individuals, communities and destinations improved. Nevertheless, it does not provide a system wide understanding of the effects of a large earthquake related disaster. Furthermore, even at the destination level, often the reaction to a disaster is the development of a disaster management plan rather than proactive decision making by tourism businesses and relevant government departments that incorporate disaster readiness into their daily operations and strategies (Orchiston, 2013; Tsai & Chen, 2010). In many cases, the regions affected by earthquakes, for example, are characterized by high disaster risk but lack sufficient resources for comprehensive public disaster relief work (Tsai & Chen, 2010; see Das & Chakrabarty, this volume).
No destination is immune to natural hazards, thereby requiring destination marketing and management organisations (DMOs) and the tourism industry to work collaboratively with local and central government to develop disaster plans and management strategies (Nguyen et al., 2018). Disasters have an impact on all aspects of the tourism system, including the generating region, transit routes and the destination region (Figure 1.1). However, the full system-wide affects are often not sufficiently appreciated, for example there is very little research of the impact of a disaster at a destination on the transit regions and stops that are connected to it. Nevertheless, as shown in several studies disasters can affect tourism demand (Mazzocchi & Montini, 2001; Huang & Min, 2002; Wang, 2009; Mendoza et al., 2012; Wu & Hayashi, 2014; Cró & Martin, 2017) through tourists’ negative perceptions of safety and security, as well as access to accommodation and transport. Often, both air traffic and maritime traffic have to be diverted from the destination if critical infrastructures such as airports and ports have been damaged, requiring travellers to find alternative transit routes (see Morpeth, this volume, for a discussion of the controversies surrounding diversion and tourist access in emergency situations). The impacts of disasters on the destination region is well documented in the literature. It is, therefore, not surprising that several management frameworks focused on disaster response in the context of tourism have been proposed (see Faulkner, 2001; Hystad & Keller, 2008; Ritchie, 2008). Disturbances in one part of the tourism system, e.g. the destination region, also has positive and negative cascading effects on other linked parts of the system (Farrell & Twining-Ward, 2004; Hall, 2008). One destinations disadvantage may be advantageous to another as tourists seek to provide substitute holiday experiences. However, several barriers such as adopting disaster preparedness initiatives, including evacuation training, maintaining emergency supplies and communicating hazard risks to tourists have been identified that impede the tourism industry’s ability to respond effectively to the negative impacts of disasters (Nguyen et al., 2018; see also Subadra, this volume, and Das & Chakrabarty, this volume). Much of the existing tourism