Tourism response to domestic disruptive events: International tourism response to domestic disruptive events: The case of Turkey

In this chapter, we try to investigate the sensitivity of people to the major political and social events in terms of their tourism demand. As a measure of sensitivity, we use the human development index (HDI) by the United Nations Development Programme. For this purpose, the tourism demand from 39 countries (OECD and Other European countries) to Turkey is estimated by using panel data approach for the period between 2000 and 2017. The change in tourist arrivals from each selected country is used as dependent variable and change in relative consumer price index (CPI) and HDI are used as the explanatory variables in order to explain the change in tourism demand to Turkey. With HDI, a dummy variable is used to investigate the effects of disruptive events as the internal problems which are Gezi Park Protest (2013), coup d'état attempt (2016) and the terrorist attacks in major cities of Turkey (2-2013-2016), foreign policy issues as the plane crisis with Russia (2016) on the tourism demand of selected countries. Key contribution of this chapter is to include HDI as a measure of people's sensitivity to such disruptive events. It is found that human development level is a significant variable explaining the change in tourism demand to Turkey in recent years.