Undertourism, knowledge validity, and urban governance: perceived overtourism risks and visitor trends in suburban Tokyo

Overtourism in tourism cities reflects a spatial disparity between central urban and suburban areas. Nevertheless, undertourism in suburban contexts remains underexplored, despite the extensive attention given to urban overtourism. To address this scholarly imbalance, this study examined how tourism practitioners in suburban Tokyo, a touristically underdeveloped area, perceived the risk of overtourism and evaluated the validity of these perceptions. Adopting a qualitatively-driven mixed methods design, the study triangulated semi-structured interviews with practitioners and statistical analyses of visitor numbers. This study revealed a heuristically shaped perception in which undertourism was regarded as a persistent risk, while overtourism was not considered imminent. This perception, which was rooted in deep contextual knowledge, was partially inconsistent with statistical evidence and hence was indicative of cognitive biases associated with local familiarity. However, interpretation of findings through the Unified Theory of Risk illuminated legitimate forms of situated judgement, challenging a common contention that subjective risk assessments are irrational and erroneous. Informed by these findings, this study highlights the importance of an epistemological dimension of overtourism risk evaluations in touristically underdeveloped areas.