DETERMINING TURKISH HOUSEHOLDS’ TOURISM CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURES IN ECONOMIC CRISIS

Abstract

Crises may influence the most economies differently in theworld and cause to diminish their national wealth and risein unemployment rates. As a developing country, Turkeyhas been impressed by some economic slumps in the worldin different periods. This study aims to investigate thetourism participation of households and estimate the mostsensitive household groups after the 2008 financial crisis byemploying Heckman two-stage model. It also revealswhich household groups change their tourismconsumption expenditures more in Turkey. The resultsshow that variations in income elasticity during the crisisare different to household groups. In other words,households with high income level were not significantlyaffected by the world economic crisis, while householdswith low income reduced tourism consumptionexpenditures both in domestic and outbound tourism.