NEWS

A paper co-authored by Seung Ho Youn , Associate Professor of the College of Sustainability and Tourism, and former graduate student Maram Tarshihi (Class of 2025, Jordan), entitled “Do Geopolitical Crises Really Matter: The Response of Small Business Owners in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector in Jordan to the Adjacent Gaza–Israel Conflict” has been published in the Administrative Sciences.

This study examines how small hospitality business owners in Jordan cope with threats arising from the adjacent Gaza–Israel conflict. Tourism crisis research has largely focused on macro-level impacts and managerial responses, while less attention has been given to the psychological processes through which small business owners interpret geopolitical instability and develop coping responses. Drawing on the transactional theory of stress, appraisal, and coping, this study uses semi-structured interviews to explore owners’ perceptions and reactions. The findings show that conflict is not automatically viewed as catastrophic. Instead, threat emerges through person–environment transactions when owners perceive the situation as harmful, uncertain, or beyond their control. Owners employ both problem-focused coping, including operational and marketing adjustments, and emotion-focused coping, such as pragmatic optimism, positive reappraisal, goal resetting, and the normalization of instability. The study extends hospitality crisis research by highlighting cognitive appraisal and offers practical insights for strengthening small-business resilience in geopolitically unstable destinations.

Read the article (English): https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci16070322