Abstract
Research on how individual tourists respond to risk has largely focussed on risk perceptions. This paper draws on behavioural economics to analyse the influence of risk tolerance and risk-related competences on how tourists organize their tourism travel, and the importance that they ascribe to specific types of tourism hazards. Whereas most tourism research on risk has been based on small, or highly age-specific surveys, or particular market segments, this paper utilises an innovative, large-scale survey drawn from the range of the UK population. There were significant differences between package tourists and individual 'drifter' tourists in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics, general and tourism-specific risk tolerance, and competence - both real and illusory - to manage risk. Age, and tolerance of both general and tourism-specific risks, were associated with the importance of hazards as deterrents to tourist behaviour, but the evidence for competences was mixed. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.