As tourists are increasingly putting off their air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has tremendously affected the travel and tourism industry, this study examined the role of negative affect, perceived health risk, perceived uncertainty, and mental wellbeing in forming travel attitudes and temporal avoidance behaviour to global destinations seriously-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic from a U.S. tourist perspective. The cross-sectional online survey showed that negative affect as a result of COVID-19 significantly influenced perceived health risk, which in turn induced mental wellbeing and perceived uncertainty. While mental wellbeing significantly predicted attitudes towards international travel and temporal avoidance behaviour, perceived uncertainty significantly predicted short-term avoidance behaviour. The insight obtained from this study provides a mechanism behind tourist avoidance behaviour in times of global health crises and implications for tourism reliant destinations to develop recovery strategies in coping with the impact of the pandemic.

The tourism industry has been seriously suffering from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis ever since its outbreak. Given this pandemic situation, the major aim of this study is to develop a conceptual framework that clearly explains the US international tourists’ post-pandemic travel behaviors by expanding the theory of planned behavior (TPB). By utilizing a quantitative process, the TPB was successfully broadened by incorporating the travelers’ perceived knowledge of COVID-19, and it has been deepened by integrating the psychological risk. Our theoretical framework sufficiently accounted for the US tourists’ post-pandemic travel intentions for safer international destinations. In addition, the perceived knowledge of COVID-19 contributed to boosting the prediction power for the intentions. The associations among the subjective norm, the attitude, and the intentions are under the significant influence of the tourists’ psychological risks regarding international traveling. The comparative criticality of the subjective norm is found. Overall, the findings of this study considerably enhanced our understanding of US overseas tourists’ post-pandemic travel decision-making processes and behaviors.