Reexamining Consumers’ Foreign Bias Toward Service Providers: How International Conflicts Shape Consumer Healthcare Decision-Making

Although healthcare workforce shortages are global, countries with more severe gaps often recruit professionals from abroad. In particular, the proportion of foreign healthcare providers in the United States has increased substantially, creating new considerations and concerns in relation to consumer biases against foreign professionals. Most research treats foreign bias as uniform, but international conflicts may create unique forms of foreign bias, which we define as foreign conflict bias. Such events act like collective traumas, triggering shared emotional responses that subtly shape perceptions of safety and influence risk appraisals in future encounters when the conflict is made salient. A field study with consumer reviews of real healthcare providers before and after an international conflict and three experimental studies provide evidence that consumers anticipate greater risk from service providers associated with countries in conflict with their own. This increases their likelihood to switch providers and spread negative word of mouth, revealing a foreign conflict bias. This study clarifies the relevance of international conflicts for service research and practice and offers strategies to mitigate their negative effects.