The tour guide is an important part of tourism activities. In the process of travel, tour guide masters the overall situation and holds a core position, which is one of the key factors for the success of travel agency. In the international tourism industry, tour guide service is called “the soul of tourism” [1]. They are a key factor in a tour to succeed and can affect customer loyalty [2,3]. It can be said that the tour guide has traveler company managers, salesperson and representative, entertainer and other leaders’ boundary-spanning roles [4].

In the past, many studies have focused on the style and role of the tour leader [5], tour guide leader intrinsic risks [6], Emotional service [3], service quality [7,8], tips [9], living status [10], performance [11] and happiness [1]. Research has also been focused on the family relationship of the tour guide who are at the frontline of the tourism industry, result has shown that tour guide difficult to balance work and family, may be unable to maintain regular social relationships with friends [12,13].

However, the phenomena such as non-standardized tourism market, unbalanced interest, imperfect social security system, misunderstanding of tourists and a large number of negative reports, cause the tour guide to be incapable of having a safe and dignified work environment [14]. Meanwhile, tour guide profession faces high risks. According to statistics from the China Mediation and Administration Center involved in the demonstration project of travel agency’s liability insurance, there were 3,435 tourist traffic accidents from 2010 to 2015, resulting in 19,266 casualties. Among the 138 accidents involving tour guides and travel agencies, 140 tour guides were harmed, and 18 of them died with the mortality rate of 12.9%, 9% higher than the average mortality rate [15]. It can be seen that the work safety and risk management of tour guides should not be ignored, which should arouse the attention of tour guides themselves and tourism management departments.

Tour guide

The World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (WFTGA) defines a tour guide as a person who guides visitors in the language of their choice and interprets the cultural and natural heritage of an area which person normally possesses an area-specific qualification usually issued or recognised by the appropriate authority [16]. Tourism Bureau of Taiwan defines a tour guide as a person who reception or guide tourists of travel business to an national country and receive charge [17]. China National Tourism Bureau defines a tour guide as a person who holds a tour guide qualification certificate and is entrusted by a tour agency to undertake the work of accompanying tour groups in visitation activities following a tour arrangement plan [18].

Poynter defines the tour guides as a guide, leader, translator, and other staff in the tourism industry, responsible for the dynamic management of the travel group. Especially in the course of an overseas trip, they need to coordination suppliers including hotels, restaurants, transportation and tourist attractions, and they mainly serve as guiding responsibilities in the travel contract [19]. A tour guide is defined as a person who in the language of the visitor’s choice, the cultural and natural heritage and environment, and guides the groups to visit the buildings, sites and landscapes of a city or region [20].

Yang [10], Ye and Sun [21] analyze the current survival situation of tour guides, explains the spiritual and material pressures as well as psychological problems faced by tour guides, and put forward some suggestions on the survival crisis of tour guides. Tsaur and Teng [5] through in-depth interviews, content analysis, and a Q-sort method to extends current knowledge of the tour guiding styles of tour guides. From an exploratory factor analysis on 243 tour guides, twelve tour guiding styles were extracted. And then, a confirmatory factor analysis on 474 tour members was then performed to identify the validity of the 43-item tour guiding styles scale. Zhai [22] believes that tour guides, who play a key role in a group tour, shoulder many responsibilities, and the safety responsibility should be the first, traffic safety is the most important. The tour guides, as the important workers in the tourism, lack of security awareness obviously as well as work safety and risk perception capability, which should be emphasized.

Risk management theory

The risk management theory refers to the organization confirms information security threats and vulnerabilities through risk analysis and risk evaluation, estimates the possibility of occurrence, and then conduct risk assessment to plan and organize information security requirement, and formulate risk reduction management measures in order to keep the information security risks controlled at an acceptable level [23]. Clarke and Varma point out that risk refers to the uncertainty of time and state and the possibility of loss or gain [24]. Risk refers to the experience and feelings of individuals on dangers as well as the situations or events featured with uncertainty and likely to cause negative influence [25]. Deng believes that the risks are uncertain about the outcome of the attempt, and may result in unanticipated profit or loss in person or property [26]. Wu points out that risk refers to the possibility of loss caused by adverse events [27].

The risk in the Ministry of Education Mandarin Dictionary explains that risk is equal to danger, crisis, its similar word is also dangerous. The definition of risk in Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary is the probability of loss or injury [28]. Song defines risk management as a management process in which economic individuals integrate and use limited resources to minimize the adverse impact of the existence of risk on individuals [29]. Risk assessment must go through a series of implementation processes, including risk identification, risk measurement, risk strategy analysis and recommendations, to achieve risk management objectives [30]. Mikulić, Sprčić, Holiček and Prebežac using integrated risk management steps: Define tourism destination target, analyze internal and external environment, risk identification, risk assessment, risk map, risk management selection and continuous monitoring and evaluation. Tourism is a very sensitive industry, and it is vulnerable to internal and external events. Compared with other industries, tourism is very comprehensive, involving a wide range, and supply chain are very complex. Therefore, tourism enterprises, tourism workers and tourists not only have the risk characteristics of objectivity, uncertainty and contingency, but also have their own characteristics [31].

Tour guide risk management indicators

Indicators are consistent grades and principles of measurement [32]. An indicator is a statistical measure that is representative enough to describe a true situation. Roehl and Fesenmaier took a research on the concept of risk perception in tourism. Utilizing factor analysis, they identified three basic dimensions of perceived risk: physicalequipment risk, destination risk and vacation risk [33]. Fuchs and Reichel investigated the foreign tourists’ destination risk perception of Israel. They identified six risk perception factors: human-induced risk; financial risk; service quality risk; social–psychological risk; food safety problems and weather risk; natural disasters and car accident risk [34]. Boksberger et al. examined risk perception in commercial air travel. They identified six specific perceived risk dimensions in air travel. Financial risk, Functional risk, Physical risk, Psychological risk, Social risk and Temporal risk [35]. Jiang thinks that tourism risks include six main aspects, namely: Transportation and communication risk, public order risk, accommodation risk, health risk, medical rescue risk and tourist attraction risk [36]. Lin takes the Chinese travelling to the mainland as the research object, analyzes the tourism risk from different aspects, such as tourism types, regional differences and so on. The tourism risks faced by Chinese people in mainland China are mainly traffic risks, decree risks, operational risks, public security risks, tourism rights and interests risks, weather risks, social and cultural risks, catering health risks accommodation risk and medical support risk and other ten types [37]. Fuchs and Reichel surveyed 760 international visitors to Israel and found that the risk perception of first-time visitors was mainly human risk, psychosocial risk, food safety and weather risk. The risk perception of repeated visitors is financial risk, service quality risk and natural risk [38].

Previous studies have been based on the risk perception of tourists. Wang et al. [6] conducted a survey of tour guides in Taiwan, and conducted qualitative interviews with 24 tour guides. They extracted a total of 12 risk management factors, divided into external risks, the risks caused by tourists and the self-risk of tour guides; They continued their quantitative study of 310 tour guides to investigate different risk perceptions of 12 risk factors during their trips to six groups in China, Thailand, Japan, the United States, New Zealand / Australia and the United States. So as to provide group tourism risk control improvement suggestions. By this, Hsu and Lin the fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization Method conducted in-depth interviews with 40 tour guides to Determine the overall internal risk factors,12 risk factors are optional tour and shopping, tour guide’s operating negligence, driver problems, sexual harassment and accusation from tourists, bribery and obstruction by customs officers, tourist’s compensation problems associated, tourist’s taxable and prohibited goods, change in itinerary and tipping problems, tourist’s visa and passport expiration issues, hijacking and plane crash, luggage lost and damaged, document and property stolen. Second, they use traditional prometheus and fuzzy prometheus methods compared 12 risk factors across the four routes of the United States, Japan, Australia and Thailand. The above research has not completely constructed the work safety and risk management factors of tour guide. This study tries to construct the indicator system of risk factors and risk management control factors in the working process of tour guides by taking the tour guide and the outbound leader as the research group. To provide tourism related departments to reflect on business management and guide team leader risk aversion impact control [39].

This research aims at establishing the work safety and risk management indicators of tour guide. First of all, based on the literature review method, this paper examines the relevant researches and indicators at domestic and abroad, and refers to the intrinsic risk indicators for tour guide raised by Wang, Jao, Chan and Chung [6]. Meanwhile, it selects five senior tour guides from Xiamen city to conduct in-depth interviews, including national excellent tour guides and tourism management associate professors in universities, to draft the preliminary indicator and framework. Secondly, it selects the experts in the industrial and academic fields related to tour guide work safety and risk management as the directors of tour guide management department and the gold-medal tour guides with rich experience, a total of 20, to establish the list of experts, the list of experts is shown in Table 1. The first round of Delphi method questionnaires is released to inquire into the opinions of experts on the idea of tour guide work safety and risk management indicator system. Thirdly, it revises the indicator structure and item, calculates the statistical results and revises the indicator, releases the second round of Delphi method questionnaires and presents the reference materials related to the statistical results of the first round questionnaires. Besides, it integrates the second round of questionnaires to realize the expert consistency of its statistical data, and then end the survey.

Table 1: The list of Delphi experts.

First, it establishes the first round of questionnaires by aid of literature review and expert interview. In this study, there are a total of 34 indicators in eight facets, namely financial risk, personal risk, work risk, service tourist risk, social psychological risk, natural disaster risk, career risk and family support risk.In the first round, the questionnaires are tested from March 6 to 13, 2018, 20 questionnaires are released, and 17 are effectively recovered with the effective rate of 85%. Taking the SPSS21 and the Likert five-point scale as a measurement tool, the higher the score is, the more important the experts think. According to the first round of expert questionnaires, all the dimensions are consistent, and the average of the facet items range from 4.00 to 4.53, the rankings from high to low are all greater than 4, all experts agree with the facet indicator (Table 2).

Table 2: Facet data analysis table.

This part of the expert recommends that the name of the indicator be revised as follows :1. “physical risk” is revised to “personal risk”; 2. “service risk” is changed to “Service tourist risk”; 3. The “income instability” in the financial risk structure is revised to “unreasonable income composition”; 4. In the work risk structure, “shopping fraud” is changed to “tourist shopping risk”, “tourist safety” is changed to “ourist service associated risk”, and moved to the service risk structure. In addition, the experts also recommended the addition of the item “risk of miscarriage”; 5. The “self-esteem” in the social-psychological risk structure was revised to “the loss of self-esteem”; 6 . In the course of career risk structure , the “growth path” is changed to “growth bottleneck” , “Internet +” and “era risk” item are combined into “wisdom tourism impact” , and it is recommended to add “occupational instability” item; 7. In the family support risk structure, it is suggested to increase the item of “increased difficulty in marriage”.

Secondly, after the first round of questionnaires is collected and analyzed, it analyzes and revises the experts’ opinions step by step, presents the results of the questionnaires in the second round of questionnaires, adds or deletes the suggestions of the experts and make feedback to the experts, thus to let the experts know and refer to the opinions of the experts in the first round and get a more consistent result. After the second round of questionnaires is collected and sorted, it conducts screening and analysis according to the convergence criteria. The second round questionnaires are conducted from March 14 to 22, 2018, a total of 17 questionnaires, 15 are effective with the effective rate of 88.2%. In the second round of questionnaires, a total of 37 indicator items are investigated for the second time. Based on analysis on overall indicator items made by the experts, it deletes the three items unrecognized by experts to realize high consistency and selects a total of 34 indicator items from eight dimensions, and then end the survey as is shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Indicator data analysis table.

In the aspects of work safety and risk management, tour guides agree that work risk and career risk are more important. Given the specific items. The home of a tour guide, part of the line without subsidies, to hand in the head fee, advance group money cannot be recovered on time the enormous pressure will affect the quality of service with the regiment; In terms of personal risk, tour guides think that long working hours, long physical activities, no regular diet and rest conditions, easily lead to occupational diseases of tour guides and personal health concerns; In terms of work risk, the greatest sense of risk comes from traffic safety, due to a particular occupation. Tour guides are prone to accidents when they travel by plane, car or boat. Although the National Tourism Administration also has a joint transportation department to further regulate the tourist vehicle guide special seat related matters, this is not actually put into practice; In the aspect of the risk of serving tourists, because of the operation problems of travel agencies, the quality problems of local service agencies, and even the neglect of service by suppliers, such as cars, ships, hotels, restaurants, scenic spots and so on, it is easy to lead tour guides to sue for risk.

In the risk of natural disasters, due to bad weather problems, the itinerary cannot be completed smoothly, but also often create disputes between tour guides and tourists, thus triggering customer litigation. In the aspect of social psychological risk, it is easy to cause the psychological health problems of tour guides because of the low professional social status of tour guides, the distrust of tourists, the negative evaluation of media and the publicity of word-of-mouth. In terms of career risk, tour guides generally think that career income is unstable, social security is missing, there are no good conditions for career planning, and they can’t find a sense of belonging. In the risk of family support, it is easy to cause family conflicts and gender conflicts because tour guides travel outside for a long time, work and rest irregular and unable to take care of families.

This study summarizes the qualitative and quantitative methods, and the results not only fill the theoretical gaps in tourism risk research, but also provide insight into risk management strategies. The work safety and risk management of tour guides determine the satisfaction of tour guides, which will affect the stability and loss rate of tour guides. The competent tourism authorities should strengthen the work safety of tour guides and supervise the implementation of the policies of the relevant units. Tour guide service organizations at all levels should give full play to the role of industry organizations, enhance the sense of professional belonging of tour guides, and promote the guarantee of guide professional rights and interests. Every travel agency should strictly sign labour contract and social insurance, guarantee the timely reimbursement of tourist funds, clarify the attribution of tourism responsibility, care for tour guide personnel from the angle of work, study and family, and ensure the legal rights and interests of tour guide group. The tour guide is the “citizen ambassador” promoted by the city, which is also an important magic weapon for the success of the travel agency. Improving the work safety of tour guides is an important measure to promote the change of tourism industry from traditional industry to modern service behaviour. The purpose of this study is to induce the decision-making thinking of tour guide management departments and tour guides.

In this study, snowball sampling was adopted, and Xiamen senior tour guide, tour guide management supervisor and university tourism management teacher were chosen. The representativeness was not enough to interpret the real information of the mother body, that is to say, the ability to generalize the research results was limited. Therefore, it is suggested that in the future, AHP analytic hierarchy process and quantitative questionnaire can be used to further improve the work safety and risk management indicator research of tour guides, and can have more reference information of practical value.