Examination of individual preferences for future security policy initiatives at a mass tourist destination

The travel and tourism industry is dependent upon air transport. Especially peripheral island tourism destinations are almost exclusively dependent upon air transport. At the same time, the travel and tourism industry is particularly vulnerable to exogenous factors and influences. Hence, safety and security levels are of particular importance to policy makers and practitioners alike, since they bear a direct and significant effect on tourism arrivals. The paper makes use of stated choice experiments to evaluate individual preferences, utilizing a sample of 500 respondents. The paper utilizes a systematic heterogeneous preference specification approach in order to relax some of the restrictive propertied of homogeneous preference specification approach, and thus unmask a greater degree of variation in preferences among visitors. This alternative preference specification structure provides interesting insights on the preference of individual travelers belonging at different demand segments. The empirical findings derived from the systematic heterogeneous preference specification indicate that young visitors (younger than 25 years of age) have opposing preferences for future security related policy initiatives at an aviation setting, as compared to older visitors (older than 65 years of age). Based on this observation, more temporal specific policy initiatives could be developed. At the same time, due to familiarity and other psychological factors, managers and policy makers have to adopt more age and family friendly security policies. Overall, a bottom—up and reactive approach to aviation security policy-making could provide more efficient allocation of resources and more effective policy-making in the field.