Bibliometric examination of health tourism in the context of hygiene

Abstract

Objective: In recent years, health tourism has been increasing its importance in terms of both the development of national economies and improving the quality of health systems. Health tourism is summarized as the visit of people who demand treatment to different regions in order to access high-cost treatments outside the region where they live, often at lower prices. Health tourism is included in the literature not only in terms of access to lower-priced services, but also as a form of tourism that occurs when individuals who demand the service want to access quality services. This study aims to evaluate the publications on health tourism, which consumers apply in line with their needs, from different perspectives, to reveal the diffusion and relationships of existing studies and to examine the hygiene effect. Methods: The data used in this study were obtained from studies published only in the English language by filtering the studies in “Scopus” and “WoS” (Web of Science) databases between 2020–2024. In the retrieval of the data, restrictions were made as “health tourism” in titles, abstracts and keywords and “hygiene” in all fields. In the bibliometric analysis part, co-author analysis, keywords analysis, country citation analysis, author citation analysis, source citation analysis, and bibliographic matching analysis were performed, respectively, using the Vosviewer program. The geographical distribution of studies on health tourism was visualized using the R program and Biblioshiny plugin. Results: As a result of the review, it was determined that the studies searched in the WoS database consisted of 3512 research articles, 338 reviews, 217 early access publications, and 179 conference proceedings, while the publications in the Scopus database were 303 research articles, 55 reviews, 60 book chapters, and 24 conference proceedings. It has been observed that the number of studies conducted in the last five years has increased significantly, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the interconnections of studies on health tourism were evaluated from different perspectives. The countries, authors, and relationship tables that publish the most on the subject were revealed. Conclusion: It has been observed that studies on health tourism continue to increase every year. It has been determined that the research on health tourism is unevenly distributed on the basis of countries and that the leading countries in this field constitute a significant part of the total studies. The importance of hygiene concept in health tourism has been shown with the help of analysis results, tables and graphs.