Modelling the determinants of birth tourism demand: a time series analysis

Abstract

Birth tourism has been steadily rising in recent years as potential mothers travel across borders with the main purpose of giving birth. However, the economic reasons behind this form of tourism have not been adequately examined in the existing literature. This study explores the determinants of birth tourism by incorporating factors such as the average income of visitors, price level, exchange rate, and infant mortality while accounting for the potential impact of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2005 in New Zealand. The variables have been introduced into the model using a standard tourism demand framework and a new dynamic autoregressive distributed lag method has been used in the study. Ultimately, rising income of visitors and exchange rate are reported to boost birth tourism while rising price reduces birth tourism. The result also shows that the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2005 has no significant effect on birth tourism, which implies that monetary and financial considerations such as the income of tourists, price level, and exchange are the most important drivers of birth tourism in New Zealand.