An academic study has tried to map why people decide to cross a border for medical care, using two long-standing models of health behaviour, the University of Central Florida reported. It was carried out by Suja Chaulagain, Abraham Pizam and Youcheng Wang of the UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and published in the Journal of Travel Research. The work sets out to explain not whether medical tourism is growing, but what turns a person’s interest into an intention to travel.
The study put numbers on the market it was reading. About 16 million people travel abroad each year for non-emergency medical care, the study reported, spending between $3,800 and $6,000 a visit once treatment, flights and lodging are counted. Roughly 1.4 million of them are Americans, pushed by high home costs, an ageing population and gaps in insurance cover. Those figures frame medical tourism as a response to price and access at home rather than a taste for travel.
Two models, one question
The UCF study joined two frameworks that health researchers have used for decades. One is the health belief model, which reads behaviour through what a person believes about a risk and about the value of acting on it. The other weighs three things: a person’s attitude to the act, what they think others expect of them, and how much control they feel they have over doing it. Chaulagain, Pizam and Wang tested the two together against the choice to travel for care.
To do that the UCF researchers surveyed American adults who had a health condition, knew about treatment abroad and were open to it. After screening, 246 responses were kept. Its sample was 52 per cent male, with 36 per cent aged between 35 and 54; about a third held a bachelor’s degree and roughly a quarter earned between $25,001 and $50,000 a year. On cover, about 30 per cent had insurance through an employer, 23 per cent relied on Medicare and 8 per cent had none. Those answers were run through factor analysis and then structural equation modelling to test which beliefs moved which.
What moved the decision
Chaulagain, Pizam and Wang found attitude to be the hinge. Perceived benefits, such as lower cost, shorter waits and better care, lifted a person’s attitude toward travelling, and attitude in turn predicted intention. The study put it plainly: “attitude is a positive predictor of intention.” Benefits mattered more to attitude than barriers did, which suggests the promise of an upside can outweigh a fair amount of worry.
Barriers still bit. Concerns about safety, logistics and family disapproval pulled attitude down, and they also cut into a patient’s sense of control over the trip. Patients who saw high barriers tended to believe the journey was “not entirely within their control,” the study reported, which is a different problem from simply disliking the idea. Of the three factors in the planned-behaviour model, that sense of control was the strongest driver of intention, ahead of attitude and then the views of friends and family.
The severity of a person’s condition changed the weightings. The sicker the patient, Chaulagain, Pizam and Wang found, the more the balance of benefits and barriers shifted, with advanced care counting for more against the obstacles. That reading fits the market: the people most likely to fly are often those with the most to gain from a procedure they cannot easily get at home.
Selling the trip, not just the price
There is a standing lesson here for how destinations pitch themselves. Most medical tourism marketing sells cost savings, because cost is the number that photographs well. The UCF study points at a different lever. If a firm intention rests on whether a patient feels the trip is within their control, then the work that converts interest is logistical, not promotional: named contacts, clear steps, help with travel companions, and a plan for follow-up care once the patient is home. Much of what American patients actually weigh is what happens if something goes wrong far from home, and the reasons North Americans leave for care sit on the same cost-and-access pressures the study measured.
Chaulagain, Pizam and Wang frame the payoff in market terms. With this reading of intent, they wrote, providers and destinations can compete “through product differentiation” rather than on price alone. That is the argument for spending less on discount messaging and more on removing the friction that stops a willing patient from booking.
What operators should watch
The UCF findings are a survey, not a booking record, and 246 American adults are a narrow base. The test is whether operators who act on this shift their spend from price to control: shorter, clearer pathways, help for travelling companions, and a stated plan for care back home. Whether the UCF study read the market right will show in the conversion data, how many of the interested actually travel, once those barriers are worked rather than advertised.
