Leisure Time Demand and Determinants in Turkey
Selçuk Gemicioğlu, Uğur AkkoçTürkiye’de Boş Zaman Talebi ve Belirleyicileri
Selçuk Gemicioğlu, Uğur AkkoçIt was proposed for the first time by Becker (1965) that time allocation should be included in the decision processes of economic agents and also that time is a production factor. Together with Granou (1977), the economic analysis of the components of household production and of the time the individuals spent outside the market became important. Among OECD countries, Turkey is the leading country for paid work hours completed by men, while women are top in terms of household labor burden. In this way, Turkey is a special case for time allocation and gender difference. In this study, Turkey’s leisure time demands were analyzed. With this in mind, leisure time demand for all employees - working men and working women - were estimated separately using Time Use Data (TUS) 2014-2015 provided by TURKSTAT. Given that a large number of individuals reported not spending any time on leisure, the truncated Tobit method was used to determine the factors that affect leisure time demand. The gender gap in leisure time is quite evident, the main reason being that women’ s leisure demand elasticity is reduced by their unpaid work burden. However, the most important determinants of leisure time demand are wages and education level, which is the usual price of leisure time. Another important consequence of the study is that leisure time has negative income elasticity. Therefore it can be said that leisure time can be classified as an inferior good.
The first pilot applications for the systematic compilation of data in Turkey for Time Use was carried out in 1996 by TSI. Turkey’s Time Use Survey (ZKA) by TSI was carried out twice - the first time in 2006, and the second time in 2014-2015. The studies about the Turkish time use characterictics is also limited, although the data is relatively old. Erdil et al. (2006) examined the distribution of time in the inhabitants living in rural areas with their own data set. However, there are no studies with a direct approach to Turkey in terms of leisure demands. The purpose of this study is to fill the gap in available literature and to encourage other studies in this regard. In this study, leisure time demands and socio-economic and indiviuals’ economic determinants were examined using the 2014-2015 Time Usage Questionnaire (ZKA) data compiled by TURKSTAT. To facilitate this, the time preferences of working individuals were taken into account first. The reason for this is that it is accepted that the time distributions of unemployed (job seekers or retired) individuals are more than a preference or economic decline (Hamermesh, 2006). In addition, this study is also important in that it is the first study conducted by TURKSTAT based on the data from the 2014-2015 Time Use Questionnaire.
Turkey’s most important determinants of leisure time demand are wages and education. The wage is almost like a price in leisure time, and individuals pay leisure by the wages that give up. From this point of view, there appears to be a strong relationship between the price of leisure time and the quantity expected. Education, on the other hand, increases the demand for leisure time, and this effect is particularly pronounced in highly educated individuals. The main reason for this is that highly educated individuals are employed in jobs with better conditions in the labor market and therefore have less working hours. In summary, as the individual’s level of education individual increases, so too do their leisure time demands thanks to improved working conditions, while the leisure time demand decreases as the wage increases. A similar positive effect occurs when the household has a non-labour income. If household has any income aside from wages, the leisure demands of household members increases.
