Tourism and insecurity in the world

The study assesses the role of forces of law and order in modulating the insecurity-tourism nexus in 163 countries for the period 2010 to 2015. Policy syndromes or insecurity dynamics include: violent crime, access to weapons, political instability and perception of criminality, while the policy variables of forces of law and order are captured with “security officers and police” and “armed service personnel.” The empirical evidence is based on negative binomial regressions. The findings show that the policy variables can be effectively used to crowd-out the negative incidence of policy syndromes on tourist arrivals. The results are contingent on net effects (from conditional and unconditional effects), insecurity dynamics and thresholds. A threshold is an inflexion point at which the unfavorable unconditional effect from a policy syndrome of insecurity on tourist arrivals is completely neutralized by policy variables of forces of law and order. Policy implications are discussed. © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.