Investigating the Effect of Terrorist Activities on Tourism Demand in Selected Middle Eastern Countries

The tourism is considered as one of the factors of achieving economic growth and development, but terrorist activities through damage to the infrastructure, and physical and human resources as well as indirect effects such as reducing the desire to foreign and domestic invest, increasing the cost of trade and weakening it, intensifying uncertainty, making space more secure and increasing military and security expenses, etc., lead to damage to the tourism industry of a country. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of terrorist activities on tourism demand in selected West Asian countries during the period of 1990-2019 using panel data. The results showed that the effect of terrorist incidents on tourism demand is negative and significant. Meanwhile, the more terrorist casualties in a country, the lower the number of international tourists entering that country, because the societies in which psychological and life security of tourists are preserved, they will be more beneficial to tourists, and they will be the priority of their choice for travel.