{"title":"Travel for health as a type of niche tourism and economic growth: A cross-country panel data analysis","authors":"Seymur Ağazade","doi":"10.1002/jtr.2681","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although the potential of the health tourism to support economic growth can be based on strong theoretical foundations, it is also argued that this tourism type may hinder economic growth by weakening labor productivity. On this basis, the present study aims to examine the effect of health tourism on economic growth. The study uses panel data fixed effects method with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and dataset of 72 countries. The findings strongly supported that health tourism boosts economic growth. To be more precise, it was estimated that a one-point increase in health tourism revenues, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) of personal health travel exports, causes an increase of 4.9345 in GDP growth rate and 4.2558 in per capita GDP growth rate. Furthermore, the negative growth effect of health tourism through labor productivity, which is theoretically proposed and expressed as crowding-out effect, was not supported by the findings.</p>","PeriodicalId":51375,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Tourism Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Tourism Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jtr.2681","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Although the potential of the health tourism to support economic growth can be based on strong theoretical foundations, it is also argued that this tourism type may hinder economic growth by weakening labor productivity. On this basis, the present study aims to examine the effect of health tourism on economic growth. The study uses panel data fixed effects method with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and dataset of 72 countries. The findings strongly supported that health tourism boosts economic growth. To be more precise, it was estimated that a one-point increase in health tourism revenues, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) of personal health travel exports, causes an increase of 4.9345 in GDP growth rate and 4.2558 in per capita GDP growth rate. Furthermore, the negative growth effect of health tourism through labor productivity, which is theoretically proposed and expressed as crowding-out effect, was not supported by the findings.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Tourism Research promotes and enhances research developments in the field of tourism. The journal provides an international platform for debate and dissemination of research findings whilst also facilitating the discussion of new research areas and techniques. IJTR continues to add a vibrant and exciting channel for those interested in tourism and hospitality research developments. The scope of the journal is international and welcomes research that makes original contributions to theories and methodologies. It continues to publish high quality research papers in any area of tourism, including empirical papers on tourism issues. The journal welcomes submissions based upon both primary research and reviews including papers in areas that may not directly be tourism based but concern a topic that is of interest to researchers in the field of tourism, such as economics, marketing, sociology and statistics. All papers are subject to strict double-blind (or triple-blind) peer review by the international research community.