Medical Tourism: Does Consumer Ethnocentrism Impact Attitude and Intentions

Medical Tourism, though growing in popularity, is still not considered as an option by many. This has been found to be the case even though there is a general agreement that the medical care system in developed countries has shortcomings such as high costs and limited availability. Medical tourism can offer a solution, but it has not taken off as expected. This research looks at some of the reasons behind consumers’ concerns and explores if consumer ethnocentrism influences consumers’ attitudes and intentions towards medical tourism. This research follows a quantitative approach and uses structural equation modelling with AMOS to create a model predicting intentions. 537 respondents were surveyed to measure their consumer ethnocentrism, attitude towards medical tourism, and their behavioural intentions towards the same. Also included in the model were the observed variables “travelled overseas”, “gender,” and “trust in primary care physician.” SPSS is utilized to study mediation effects in the model. The empirical results demonstrate that consumer ethnocentrism does influence attitude and together they do influence behavioural intentions towards medical tourism. Furthermore, consumer ethnocentrism was found to mediate the effect of attitude on behavioural intentions. However, the effect of consumer ethnocentrism on intentions was found to be much smaller than its effect on attitude indicating that consumers were guided more by pragmatism than ideology when it came to healthcare decisions. The study closes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of this research.