title: Medical tourists: who goes and what motivates them?
abstract: This study relates consumers' attitudes toward medical tourism to a number of consumer characteristics, such as age, education, income, and insurance status. Principal components analysis of the attitudes of 289 consumers from various communities of North Carolina resulted in three attitude-related factors: economic, treatment-related, and travel-related. Major findings include: (a) the uninsured and low-income consumers are more sensitive to economic factors than the insured and the middle-income consumers; (b) the 51- to 64-year-olds are less motivated by economic factors than young adults; (c) surprisingly, the better one's health, the more one is motivated by treatment-related factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Finance, and Decision Sciences, School of Business, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, North Carolina 28372-1510, USA. lydia.gan@uncp.edu
authors.forename: Lydia L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Gan
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Frederick
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D057193:Medical Tourism / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017057:Medically Uninsured / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D009657:North Carolina; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult