Tourism, terrorism, perceived risk and media

The purpose of this paper is to identify Portuguese residents’ apprehensions about perceived risks, including the terrorism risk, while travelling abroad. It was implemented a quantitative research methodology and there were collected samples. The factor analysis, specifically the principal component analysis with varimax rotation, was used to assess the underlying structure of Portuguese tourist’s risk perception. We found four dimensions, namely, “risk in international trips”, “interest in terrorism news”, “perceived importance of safety” and “generalized insecurity”. The perceived risk dimensions were collapsed into one and using logistic regression analysis, the risk dimension was regressed against a set of independent variables to determine which factors influence the Portuguese tourist’s perceived risks. The results show that monthly net income, perception of terrorism in Africa, risk aversion, level of education, travel companion, number of international trips and thinking that travelling is risky nowadays are significant to the model.