Purpose – Some researchers have found that disasters may have a ‘‘blessing in disguise effect’’ that some disaster sites transformed into more popular tourism destinations; however, no studies have analyzed the heterogeneity of the ‘‘blessing in disguise effect’’. This paper aims to explore and determine the effect of cultural distance on international inbound tourist arrivals to a post-disaster tourist destination that could explain this heterogeneous phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – This study used a threshold regression model and a differences-indifferences (DID) approach to analyze 2000–2016 international tourist arrival data from 13 main origin countries to Sichuan Province before and after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in China. Find ings – The effect of cultural distance on post-disaster inbound arrivals from the various origin countries followed a non-linear U-shaped ‘‘double-edged sword’’ pattern rather than displaying a simple linear relationship. Most notably, the disaster appeared to have a more positive effect on arrivals from countries with larger cultural distances, while the effect on arrivals from countries with shorter cultural distances was negative. Originality/value – This study found that cultural distance could explain the heterogeneous ‘‘blessing in disguise’’ phenomenon, and it had both positive and negative impacts on tourism destination recovery; that is, a definite ‘‘double-edged sword effect’’ of cultural distance was found, which could help destination marketing organizations and management departments to design appropriately targeted marketing for post-disaster tourism destination recovery.
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