Medical Tourism: Consumers’ Concerns Over Risk and Social Challenges

ABSTRACT

This paper studies factors that motivate an American’s decision to seek medical care outside the United States. Principal components analysis yielded three factors – risk, social-related, and vacation. We found that the middle-income earners and recipients of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, are more motivated by risk-related factors to travel for care, but the middle-aged and older, and the married are more motivated by social-related factors to travel for care. Medical tourism has the potential to ease the strain on the healthcare systems of developed countries. How well it does this will depend on how policy makers address these factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical tourism
• motivations
• demographics
• risk
• social challenges

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lydia L. Gan

Lydia L. Gan, Professor of Economics, School of Business, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Box 1510, Pembroke, NC 28372, USA (E-mail: [email protected]).

James R. Frederick

James R. Frederick, Associate Professor of Economics, School of Business, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Box 1510, Pembroke, NC 28372, USA (E-mail: [email protected]).