Too Afraid to Travel? Development of a Pandemic (COVID-19) Anxiety Travel Scale (PATS)

Pandemics are affecting tourism in many ways. Being a niche research field before, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created a strong urgency to develop this topic. For researching pandemic-induced changes in tourist beliefs and travel behaviour, we developed a construct that measures the intra-personal anxiety of travellers (and non-travellers): the Pandemic (COVID-19) Anxiety Travel Scale (PATS), using two large online studies (N=2,180; N=2,062) and including two different cultural contexts (US; Denmark). In Study 1, explorative and confirmative factors analysis confirms a short and easy-to-use 5-item solution, while the presented model adds face validity. In Study 2, we confirmed the structure (reliability) and tested nomological validity, by putting PATS into the context of different constructs (xenophobia and prevention focus). Although the proposed scale arose from the coronavirus (COVID-19), it is not limited to this specific pandemic and will hopefully prove to be a valuable measurement tool for future pandemics as well.