EFFECTS OF FOREST FIRES ON TOURISM IN TURKEY

Abstract

Forest fires consistently exist in nature due to human interference like negligence, intention, incident, or natural events. It is essential to research to reduce the damage given to nature and estimate economic results. Turkey is part of one of the most vulnerable regions of the world to the global warming, and it is located in the Mediterranean region where forest fires have been widespread. Between 2013-2020 more than half of the forest fires in terms of hectare in Turkey has occurred in cities with coastlines to the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. For these reasons, our study aims to examine the effects of wildfires on the tourism sector in Turkey. The relationship between forest fires and the number of both foreign and domestic tourists is analyzed to examine the impact of fires on the tourism sector by employing the dynamic panel data analysis. According to our results, there is a significantly negative relationship between forest fires and the number of tourists. Having said that, when domestic and foreign tourists are differentiated, the negative effect comes from the foreign tourist variable. Accordingly, a 10% increase in the burnt areas reduces the number of growth of foreign tourists by 0.47 percent. Our Difference Generalized Method of Moments estimates show that while this negative relationship prevails especially for foreign visitors, domestic visitors do not seem to be significantly affected from forest fires.