Bibliometric Analysis of Airport Competition

Abstract

Air transportation, whose importance has increased in terms of tourism and trade with the increase in globalization, has made airports more valuable economically and strategically. Choosing between airports that differ in terms of their location, cost, transportation, facilities and conditions has become an economically and strategically important concept for both individual users and businesses. In this context, the concept of airport competition has emerged, and while this competition offers better quality service, lower costs and more options for airlines and passengers, it highlights sustainability and profitability for airport operators. While the increasing importance of airport competition has emerged as an important concept for passengers and airline companies, it has also attracted the attention of academic researchers, and studies in this field have been included in the literature.

In the study, 101 studies consisting of articles, early access articles and review studies, obtained from the "Web of Science" source, conducted in English in the field of airport competition and covering the years 2012-2024, were analyzed with the "R bibliometrix" program. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that the most relevant author in the field of airport competition was Hans-Martin Niemeier, and the authors with the highest productivity in terms of the number of citations and h, g, m indexes were Xiaowen Fu and Anming Zhang. It was observed that the publishing houses that gave the most coverage to studies in the field of airport competition were Airport Competition: The European Experience and Journal of Air Transport Management, and the journal with the most cited publications in the relevant field was determined to be Journal of Air Transport Management. In terms of the country where the responsible author is located, the country with the most publications was determined as England, and in the studies examined in terms of keywords, it was seen that the concepts of "choice" and "competition", which express the choice among airports, were the most repeated keywords.