Structural break analysis of Korea’s inbound tourism demand using the Bai-Perron test: Detection of structural breaks and typology of tourism crises

This study applies the Bai-Perron multiple breakpoint test to Korea’s inbound tourism demand data from five major countries (China, Japan, the United States, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) over the period from 2005 to 2024. The objective is to identify statistically significant structural breaks in the time series and to develop a typology of external tourism crises. The analysis reveals that structural breaks occurred at different times across countries, and these points were retrospectively linked to crises of various types, including economic, security-related, geopolitical conflict, and disease outbreaks. Moreover, the countries demonstrated divergent responses depending on the crisis type: while some experienced a decline in inbound tourism demand, others recorded increases, even in response to the same event, indicating heterogeneity in both the significance and direction of impacts. Despite these variations, the COVID-19 pandemic induced structural breaks in all five country-specific models. This study highlights the applicability of structural break tests for detecting external shocks in tourism demand and offers foundational insights for evaluating tourism resilience and designing differentiated crisis response strategies.