Quantitative evaluation of tourism crisis response policies: overview and lessons from China's tourism epidemic response policies

Governments and DMOs have enacted a number of policies to cope with the impacts of unpredictable disruptions, such as COVID-19, on recovering regional tourism industries. Retrospective analysis and scientific evaluation of the content, quality, and implementation efficacy of existing policies serve as an important reference for future policy formulation, modification, and improvement. This study utilized the PMC-AE index model to construct an evaluation model of the tourism epidemic response policy and then evaluated and compared China's tourism policies at the national and provincial levels from the perspective of policy formulation. The results indicated that: First, China's tourism epidemic response policy included four categories: epidemic prevention and control and follow-up supervision, relief support and recovery development, resumption of work and production, and consumption promotion. Second, most of the policies remain relatively high, and the scores at national and provincial levels decline from high to low, forming a 'top-down' pattern to cope with the epidemic's impact effectively. Simultaneously, there were no significant differences between policy types and regions, but provincial policies were significantly more targeted than specialized policies. Lastly, some tourism epidemic response policies remained problematic, particularly concerning insufficient predictive content, a single target audience, the structural imbalance of incentive methods, and the lack of cooperation between the publishing parties. This study validated the reliability and efficacy of the PMC-AE policy evaluation system in tourism policy research and provided a reference for formulating future epidemic response policies.