Post-Pandemic Dining: A Risky Business?

After the first wave of COVID-19, some of us returned to restaurants sooner than others. Recent research by Dr Seunghun Shin of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and co-authors sheds new light on how factors such as age, sex and even residential status affected movement patterns related to dining out in the post-pandemic era. The effects of these factors dovetail with the perceived risk theory of human behaviour, and they have implications for how the catering sector can bounce back if public health crises like the pandemic occur in the future.

How “sticky” were people’s behavioural changes following the outbreak of COVID-19? Shin and co-authors were interested in whether a particular habit – eating out – resumed quickly after the initial dip, or if people stayed away from restaurants in the longer term. Catering, as an integral part of the hospitality and tourism sector, may serve as a bellwether for the industry as a whole. If, in future pandemics, people are likely to stick with the trend of eating out less, managers will need to be prepared.

Around the world, the spread of COVID-19 caused almost all activities to downshift drastically from early 2020. Movement was severely curtailed. As the researchers note, the onset of the pandemic “led people to avoid visiting popular travel sites and using public transport”, and this particularly affected mobility for dining out. For many, the sudden loss of the opportunity to share one of life’s evergreen pleasures – dining out at a favourite restaurant – was among the most keenly felt consequences of the pandemic.

Even later in 2020, when restrictions in many areas began to be relaxed, there remained good reason to be cautious about resuming old habits. Avoiding crowded indoor spaces was well recognised as an important way to stop the spread of COVID-19. Countering the motivation to avoid infection, however, was the phenomenon of “pandemic fatigue”, defined by the researchers as “the extent to which people revert to their pre-pandemic behaviours”. They hence explored which of these behavioural tendencies would win out in different cases.

Visiting a restaurant during a public health crisis is undoubtedly risky, even if the danger is invisible and uncertain. Considering this, the researchers alighted upon perceived risk theory as the ideal framework for their study of restaurant visits during the COVID-19 period. “People make decisions based on the level of risk they perceive about the possible negative consequences associated with their decisions”, they explain. Perceived risk theory explains people’s behavioural choices in terms of their personal, subjective risk perception – thus allowing for the fact that people may respond differently to the same situation.

Indeed, how much risk we associate with a given behavioural choice could be influenced by personal characteristics. For example, men and women and people from different age groups may differ in their estimation of the infection risk when visiting crowded spaces. “However, the existing literature has scarcely examined the impact of risk perception on people’s movement during COVID-19”, the researchers tell us. Helping to fill this gap, they asked how socio-demographics affected the conflict between pandemic fatigue and the need to avoid crowds.

They based their study in Jeju, South Korea’s largest island. A popular tourist destination, Jeju – and its restaurants – remained in business during the early months of the pandemic. The team had access to data from a navigation app, “the country’s most popular navigation application in terms of market share,” revealing drivers’ movements around the island in 2019–2020. This was an ideal tool for studying whether – and if so, where – people chose to resume their eating-out habits as the pandemic wore on.

Based on perceived risk theory, the researchers tested several hypotheses regarding different social groups’ restaurant visiting behaviour. For example, they predicted that men and older people would be more active than women and younger people in “diversifying their choice of areas to visit a restaurant” following the COVID-19 outbreak. This was based on the logic that men and older adults have a higher perceived risk of infection, leading them to choose restaurants in less traditionally popular areas when resuming their dining-out habit.

Psychologically, we perceive a greater infection risk in our own neighbourhoods than when we are on holiday. Therefore, the authors also predicted that local residents would diversify their destination choices more than tourists, resulting in a more even geographic spread of residents’ restaurant visits. The navigation app indicated whether drivers were in their area of residence, allowing the effect of tourism status on restaurant visits to be revealed. To test the influence of time, data for three months were compared, i.e., June 2019, April 2020 and June 2020, or “before, right after and long after” the outbreak of COVID-19, respectively.

Regarding sex differences, the data showed that in April 2020 – immediately after the outbreak – men made more restaurant visits than women, coming closer to their pre-pandemic level. This sex difference had disappeared by June. Despite their greater visit numbers in April, however, “males were likely to be more active in diversifying their spatial choice for dining”, thus tending to stay away from the most visited areas – such as beaches – and spreading out more widely across the island. This confirmed the researchers’ predictions based on men’s higher perceived level of infection risk.

As expected, age also influenced dining travel patterns during the pandemic. Compared with younger groups, diners in their 50s and 60s returned to restaurant-visiting in greater numbers right after the outbreak. However, they also diversified their spatial choices to a greater extent and spread out more widely. Eventually, by June 2020, “all age groups tended to return to their original restaurant visit patterns when they became accustomed to COVID-19”, the researchers note – suggesting that pandemic fatigue was starting to set in.

The authors also found that after the pandemic, tourists behaved analogously to women and younger people. That is, while residents of Jeju returned to restaurant-dining in greater numbers after the outbreak, tourists’ visits to restaurants did not climb back so far in April or June. Tourists also stuck more closely to their pre-pandemic location preferences, dining mainly in popular areas. “While residents dealt with the pandemic situation by diversifying their spatial choice for dining activities”, explain the researchers, “tourists were not active in taking this approach”.

Interacting with all three demographic factors – sex, age and status – was the influence of time. The researchers captured this by comparing restaurant-visit trends in the months before, immediately after, and long after the COVID-19 outbreak. By June 2020, both sex- and age-related differences were neutralised. However, the divergence between locals and tourists remained, with the former continuing to avoid crowds and seek restaurants in areas with less footfall. For caterers, this suggests an important caveat: “residents accommodating an influx of tourists may be less prone to pandemic fatigue”, i.e., more risk-averse in their choice of dining location.

Shin and co-authors’ study has rich implications for restaurant managers. Future public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be ruled out, and restaurateurs will benefit from knowing how the public’s dining habits are likely to change in response. For example, businesses in crowded tourist areas should plan for a particularly sharp downturn in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, while others can expect to become busier as diners return. Venues that are especially popular with older, male diners and local residents could reassure these potential customers by emphasising measures to limit the spread of infection.

Shin, Seunghun, Lee, Eunji, Yhee, Yerin, Kim, Jungkeun, and Koo, Chulmo. (2023). Mapping Changes in Human Mobility for Dining Activities: A Perceived Risk Theory Perspective. Tourism Review, Vol. 78, No. 4, 1164-1181