Storytelling by medical tourism agents and its effect on trust and behavioral intention

ABSTRACT

This study proposes that storytelling by medical tourism agents can be classified according to story and telling. Authenticity and educability are the key story attributes, while enjoyability, descriptiveness, and emotionality are the key telling attributes. A survey of 514 international tourists who visited South Korea mainly for medical purposes statistically validated these attributes and explored their impact on the trust and behavioral intention of medical tourists. The results show that the attributes of the story had less effect than the attributes of telling on increasing trust in medical tourists, and the degree of trust in turn positively predicted behavioral intention.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical tourism agents
• storytelling
• trust
• behavioral intention
• medical tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.