Travel for health as a type of niche tourism and economic growth: A cross-country panel data analysis

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.