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Predicting the Medical Tourism Demand of Turkey

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Industrial Engineering in the Digital Disruption Era (GJCIE 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Management and Industrial Engineering ((LNMIE))

Abstract

There is an emerging need in understanding the trends and determinants of the medical tourism industry, which have a significant impact on the host country’s economy. Turkey’s popularity as an international tourism destination combined with the expertise of Turkish medical professionals and advanced technology available in the leading medical facilities make Turkey one of the most popular travel destinations for medical tourism. While the expanding literature on medical tourism offers conceptual and theoretical knowledge on this topic, the number of empirical studies is somewhat limited. Forecast of medical tourism demand is a critical input into decisions related to investments in healthcare, tourism, and transportation infrastructure. This study models Turkey’s medical tourism demand incorporating several factors. Due to the relatively high number of indicators and a small number of observations, Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) was employed to predict the response, and the results were compared with those of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation. The empirical findings are expected to help policy makers and practitioners to deepen their understanding of medical tourism demand for Turkey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Engineering Department, Management Faculty, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Erkan Isikli, Seyda Serdarasan & Saliha Karadayi-Usta

Authors
  1. Erkan Isikli
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  2. Seyda Serdarasan
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  3. Saliha Karadayi-Usta
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seyda Serdarasan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Fethi Calisir

  2. Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, TRNC, Türkiye

    Orhan Korhan

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Isikli, E., Serdarasan, S., Karadayi-Usta, S. (2020). Predicting the Medical Tourism Demand of Turkey. In: Calisir, F., Korhan, O. (eds) Industrial Engineering in the Digital Disruption Era. GJCIE 2019. Lecture Notes in Management and Industrial Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42416-9_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42416-9_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42415-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42416-9

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