Externalities in the regional economy and the decision on internationalization: A research on medical tourism in Antalya province

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the internationalization decision of health institutions engaged in medical tourism activities and the externalities that health institutions benefit from in their region. For this purpose, a field study was conducted in Antalya, one of the most developed destinations of the tourism sector. A questionnaire was applied to 154 health institutions engaged in medical tourism activities. Exploratory factor analysis, ordinal logistic regression analysis and dependent two sample t-test were used in the study. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, eight factors were identified that contributed 73,569% to the total variance. These factors are respectively; problems (16.038%), tourism externalities (13.121), benefits of the organization with its medical tourism activity (10,886%), attractive factors in the internationalization decision (9.473%), size and experience (6.456%), the driving factors in the internationalization decision (6,378%), opportunities created by the tourism sector (5,731%) and health externalities (5,497%).