Analyzing Regional Factors Influencing Passenger, Aircraft Demand, and Freight Demand Using Penalized Geographically Weighted Regression Models

Airline passenger demand, aircraft demand, and cargo volume are among the most critical factors in the economic decision-making processes of airlines and airport management. Regional factors affecting airline passenger demand, aircraft demand and cargo volume can be divided into two main groups: socio-economic factors and air transport-related factors. This study has two main objectives: First, it emphasizes that when dealing with regional data and encountering local multicollinearity between variables, penalized models are more appropriate; second, to investigate whether the number of passengers, number of aircraft, and cargo volume are related to regional socioeconomic indicators. For this purpose, regional indicators from 48 provinces were obtained from TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute), including statistics on air transport and economic indicators. Based on the model performance criteria, Geographically Weighted Lasso Regression was determined as the most suitable model for data analysis. The findings reveal that the most important factor affecting passenger, aircraft, and cargo demand is exports, which is an indicator of regional economic growth.