This study examines the effect of terrorism and peace on tourist destination arrivals using a panel of 163 countries with data for the period 2010–2015. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments and Negative Binomial (NB) regressions. Our best estimators are from NB regressions from which the following main findings are established. First, political instability, violent demonstrations, and number of homicides negatively affect tourist arrivals, while the number of incarcerations positively influences the outcome variable. Second, the effects of military expenditure, “armed service personnel,” and “security officers and polices” are not positively significant. Managerial implications are discussed.

This study complements existing literature by investigating how military expenditure can modulate the effect of terrorism externalities on tourism. The geographical and temporal scopes are 163 countries and the period 2010–2015. The empirical evidence is based on negative binomial regressions. Terrorism externalities are measured in terms of terror-related incidents, injuries, fatalities and damaged properties. We find that military expenditure significantly lessens the destructive impact of these terror-related incidents in order to induce positive net effects on tourism. This finding is robust to all measurements of terrorism. Homicides and violent demonstrations reduce tourists’ arrivals whereas the rate of incarceration of convicted offenders has the opposite effect. The analysis is extended to income levels and regions in order to provide more opportunities for policy implications. Justifications for differences in these comparative tendencies are discussed.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in modulating the effect of governance on insurance penetration in 42 Sub-Saharan African countries using data for the period 2004-2014.Design/methodology/approach: Two insurance indicators are used in the analysis, namely, life insurance and non-life insurance. The three ICT modulating dynamics used include mobile phone penetration, internet penetration and fixed broadband subscriptions. Six governance channels are also considered, namely, political stability, “voice & accountability”, regulation quality, government effectiveness, the rule of law and corruption-control. The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments.Findings: The following main findings are established. First, mobile phone penetration does not significantly modulate governance channels to positively affect life insurance while it effectively complements “voice & accountability” to induce a positive net effect on non-life insurance. Second, internet penetration complements governance dynamics of political stability, government effectiveness and rule of law to induce positive net effects on life insurance and corruption-control for an overall positive effect on non-life insurance. Third, the relevance of fixed broadband subscriptions in promoting life insurance is apparent via governance channels of regulation quality, government effectiveness and the rule of law while fixed broadband subscriptions do not induce significant overall net effects on non-life insurance though the conditional effects are overwhelmingly significant.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, studies on the relevance of ICT in promoting insurance consumption through governance channels are sparse, especially for a region such as Sub-Saharan Africa where insurance penetration is low compared to other regions of the world.