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Medical tourism has grown to become a formidable multinational industry to generate revenue. This phenomenon has also increased impact on the healthcare sector as well as strategies development opportunities. The present study emphases on the international tourists' behavioural intention for medical tourism in Malaysia. A research framework is derived from the exceptional component of fear appeal in protection motivation theory (PMT).

Data were collected with a sample of 501 respondents and analysed via structural equation modelling approach. Both measurement model and structural model were assessed to generate the result.

The outcomes have shown a good backing on the use of adapted PMT theoretical model. There is a higher predictive power on health coping than health threats. Coping alternatives can be served as the linkage between the PMT appraisals and behavioural intention.

The study confirmed the effectiveness of using a theoretical framework in predicting international tourists' behavioural intention for medical tourism. It is suggesting that risk adaptive behaviour does offer a valuable proposition in contributing to the reception of medical tourism.

The present study argues the need for greater clarity in understanding the emergent implications for health policy and healthcare delivery for future medical tourism development.

The fundamental theories and current literature do not incorporate the component of fear appeal in explaining decision making. The study findings demonstrate that protection motivation theory has provide another promising theoretical model in explaining international tourists' behaviour intention for medical tourism.

The medical tourism industry has become one of the most profitable industries around the world wherein most of the countries exploit every effort to attract medical tourists to take advantage of its medical care benefits. The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants of medical tourists’ perceived services and their satisfaction for medical care in hospitals.

The quantitative method was conducted to examine the three groups of foreign travellers such as medical tourists, expats and normative medial tourists’ perceived medical services quality and satisfaction. Data from a survey of 266 respondents were analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique.

The findings of this study provide evidence that hospital accessibility and interpersonal behaviour are the most critical constructs that influence medical tourists’ attributes. Additionally, medical costs and health-care technicality have a significant relationship with the perceived services of medical tourists. The study also demonstrated that medical tourists’ satisfaction highly attributed to their perceived services towards the quality of medical care they received and experienced in the hospitals.

The results have important implications for managerial considerations at hospitals. Hospital accessibility is a crucial dimension to be measured at hospitals when measuring service quality. Service providers need to be mindful that all aspects of medical services are essential and need to be delivered satisfactorily to ensure customer satisfaction. Patients’ perceived services and their satisfaction is a crucial bridge in determining the likelihood of future return among patients to the hospitals.

This study has managed to convincingly secure findings to provide useful information and understanding of the hospital accessibility and interpersonal manner of health-care professionals at hospitals in Malaysia. Particularly, when any hospital offers quality services, they must consider the reasonable medical expenses that can be affordable by the average people and update their medical equipment that are necessary for technical and diagnostic purposes. By ensuring these, they can attract the medical tourists.

This paper aims to respond to a knowledge gap regarding the motivations of medical tourists, the term used to describe persons that travel across borders with the intention of accessing medical care. Commonly cited motivations for engaging in medical tourism are typically based on speculation and provide generalizations for what is a contextualized practice. This research paper aims to complicate the commonly discussed motivations of medical tourists to provide a richer understanding of these motivations and the various contexts in which medical tourists may choose to travel for medical care.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 32 former Canadian medical tourists, this study uses the Iso-Ahola’s motivation theory to analyze tourists’ motivations. Quotations from participants were used to highlight core themes relevant to critical theories of tourism.

Participants’ discussions illuminated motivations to travel related to personal and interpersonal seeking as well as personal and interpersonal escaping. These motivations demonstrate the appropriateness of applying critical theories of tourism to the medical tourism industry.

This research is limited in its ability to link various motivations with particular contexts such as medical procedure and personal demographics. However, this study demonstrates that the three commonly cited motivations of medical tourists might oversimplify this phenomenon.

By providing new insight into medical tourists’ motivations, this paper expands the conversation about medical tourists’ decision-making and how this is informed by tourism discourse. This insight may contribute to improved guidance for medical tourism stakeholders for more ethical and safe practices.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between travel motivation, perceived risks, travel constraints and perceived beneficial destination image that leads to visit intention among Middle-Eastern medical tourists. Some previous studies have explained these factors in detail, however, studies that explore the relationship between these factors in the Iranian context is scarce. Moreover, there are relatively very few studies, which focused on actual medical tourists in empirical investigation, therefore, there is still a lack of clarity in the literature regarding travel behavior and travel decision-making of medical tourists.

A quantitative study was performed on 161 Middle-Eastern medical tourists who visited Iran in early months of 2018. Purposive sampling method was used to collect the data from two private hospitals. Structural equation modeling with partial least square (PLS) approach was used and PLS 3.2.8 data analysis tool was used to test the hypotheses.

The data analysis results have found that perceived destination image was the strongest predictor of visit intention among medical tourists. The results have also found a positive effect of travel motivation and negative effect of perceived travel risks on perceived beneficial destination image.

This study aims to enrich the body of knowledge by investigating the relationship between the factors, which have important roles in travel behavior and decision-making of medical tourists. The study also bridges the gap in the literature by explaining the behavior of actual medical tourists. The findings of the study provide the much needed insight on the behavioral intention of medical tourists, which will help the service providers and policymakers to reform their strategies and policies accordingly.

The purpose of this research is to examine, from the self-efficacy standpoint, the factors that influence medical tourists' use of social media for travel planning. To that end, this study presents a conceptual framework for evaluating medical tourists' online behaviour and empirically tests the model's validity by examining various dimensions of self-efficacy.

A sample of 224 people who searched for medical tourism information online was used in this study. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the proposed model with data from an online questionnaire survey.

The findings suggest that sources of self-efficacy reinforce one's belief in the ability to use social media for medical travel planning purposes. According to the structural model analysis results, with the exception of social persuasion (SP), all of the proposed factors were significant sources of self-efficacy.

The findings can assist medical tourism providers in optimising online searches for medical travel information, as well as medical tourism destination marketers in directing the tourism providers' marketing efforts towards the use of social media to target potential medical tourists more efficiently and on a larger scale.

This study is being conducted in response to a significant knowledge gap in identifying the factors that influence medical tourists' online behaviour. This information can help medical tourism destination marketers gain a competitive advantage by using social media to target potential medical tourists more effectively and on a larger scale.

The objective of the study is to measure outbound medical tourists' satisfaction and loyalty based on medical tourists' experience from a developing country's perspective.

The medical tourists taken medical services from India constituted the population of this study. By applying a purposive and snowball sampling techniques, samples were selected. Based on the expectation confirmation theory (ECT) and a modified medical tourism experience model, this study empirically analyzed the research hypotheses by applying the partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM) technique.

The empirical result revealed that the experience of service quality, medical tourism infrastructure and experience of medical tourism expenses has a direct impact on medical tourists' satisfaction. Furthermore, destination appeal and culture has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between medical tourists' satisfaction and destination loyalty. Multigroup analysis (MGA) was performed to examine group differences of the model. The MGA results revealed that, based on age, the research model remains undifferentiated between groups. In contrast, based on income, the only relationship, medical tourism infrastructure and medical tourists' satisfaction significantly differ between groups, while others remain identical from each other.

The study results will contribute both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the study will be a helpful instrument to figure out medical tourists' behavior through the lens of ECT in a developing country’s perspective. Furthermore, practically this study results will assist policymakers and practitioners of medical tourism in formulating strategies and making future decisions effectively.

The study has uniqueness in two aspects. First, the study empirically revealed Bangladeshi medical tourists' experience and behavioral intention to Indian medical tourism destinations. Second, the study’s findings exposed quantifiable insights into the Bangladesh–India medical tourism phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationships between the health tourists’ perceptions on decisive factors (i.e. experience, technological infrastructure, flight distance, legal and moral restrictions, touristic attractions, religious similarity, waiting time and price of health tourism) and Turkey as their choice of healthcare tourism destination.

The data for this empirical study were collected from 288 patients in Turkey, all of whom being health tourists from various countries. Descriptive statistics and Kruskal–Wallis difference tests were utilized for analyses.

Statistically significant differences were found among health tourists in regards to the geographical regions of their residence. These finding suggest that differences among health tourists in regards to the geographical regions of their residence contributed to the healthcare tourists’ behaviors and health tourism market segmentations in Turkey.

Among the constraints of the study are the time and funding limitations coupled with the limitations on the scale development attempts in the health tourism literature and limitation and biases related to primary data collection. Despite all these limitations, by being the first study exploring the health tourism market segmentations in Turkey, this study contributes to the literature about the perceptions of health tourists and their reasons in choosing Turkey as a health tourism destination.

Determining the Turkey’s health tourism market segmentations will generate the positive effect on the target market which is currently heterogeneous for health tourism operators and intermediary institutions. Moreover, this knowledge would allow the target market to be divided into homogeneous groups, with different marketing mixes for each group. Homogenized groups exhibit unified purchasing behaviors for their needs. Therefore, it is very important for health tourism operators and intermediary institutions to know how the preferences of health tourists from different geographical regions vary.

The paper fulfills a need for advancing the knowledge on the decisive factors in determining Turkey as the health tourism destination by revealing perceptions of health tourists from various geographical regions. This information is very valuable for the Turkey’s healthcare tourism marketing managers who desire to implement the strategies to achieve competitive advantage in the global health tourism market.

Tourism industry is a profitable resource for countries and considered one of the main sources of income and job creation for economic development. Among the various types of tourism, medical tourism and its subsets are of great significance owing to their capabilities and competitive advantages. In this regard, the purpose of this research is to provide a framework to categorize customers based on the Zeithaml pyramid and then identify and provide strategies to create loyalty and attract customers of this industry.

This study proposed a framework for medical tourists' satisfaction and loyalty. First, by studying the literature and data gathering from Yazd (one of the cities of Iran), the effective factors on the loyalty and attraction of medical tourists were identified. These factors have been prioritized for the medical tourists who are in the platinum category by the Pareto technique and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Next, the strategies provided by experts for loyalty and attraction of medical tourists were examined. Finally, the house of quality (HOQ) as the first matrix in quality functional deployment (QFD) was used to provide operational strategies for medical tourism satisfaction. The statistical population of this research consists of medical tourists, academic experts and active physicians of medical tourism in Yazd, one of the cities of Iran.

The study results indicate the importance of “hospital reputation” in medical tourists' satisfaction. Also, “achieving international standards”, “periodic customer satisfaction assessment” and “paying attention to social responsibilities” are recognized as the most important strategies to achieve the loyalty of the most profitable group of customers, namely platinum.

This study covers both theoretical and practical aspects. Theoretically, this study developed a new framework for medical tourists' satisfaction by the Zeithaml matrix, TOPSIS, Pareto technique and QFD method. Furthermore, practically this study helps practitioners of medical tourism in medical tourists' satisfaction and loyalty.

In this study, in addition to identifying the effective factors on the loyalty and attracting medical tourists, a new framework was developed for medical tourists' satisfaction by segmentation the tourism by the Zeithaml matrix and providing operational strategies by the QFD technique.

The paper's aim is to compare experienced and potential US medical tourists' foreign health service‐quality expectations.

Data were collected via an online survey involving 1,588 US consumers engaging or expressing an interest in medical tourism. The sample included 219 experienced and 1,369 potential medical tourists. Respondents completed a SERVQUAL questionnaire. Mann‐Whitney U‐tests were used to determine significant differences between experienced and potential US medical tourists' service‐quality expectations.

For all five service‐quality dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) experienced medical tourists had significantly lower expectations than potential medical tourists. Experienced medical tourists also had significantly lower service‐quality expectations than potential medical tourists for 11 individual SERVQUAL items.

Results suggest using experience level to segment medical tourists. The study also has implications for managing medical tourist service‐quality expectations at service delivery point and via external marketing communications.

Managing medical tourists' service quality expectations is important since expectations can significantly influence choice processes, their experience and post‐consumption behavior. This study is the first to compare experienced and potential US medical tourist service‐quality expectations. The study establishes a foundation for future service‐quality expectations research in the rapidly growing medical tourism industry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing the visit intention of medical tourists to India. This study also attempts to extend the theory of planned behaviour through the integration of perceived risk and facilitating condition.

Primary data were collected from a sample of 326 medical tourists arriving in India through Terminal-3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI-T3), New Delhi, India, during the months of October–December 2019. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are deployed to analyze the collected data and validate the proposed research model.

The outputs of this study revealed that perceived financial risk, physical risk, psychological risk and facilitating conditions available in a country are significantly linked to the attitude of a medical tourist. Similarly, facilitating conditions available in a country are significantly related to perceived behavioural control of a medical tourist. Furthermore, it is also revealed that attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control are significantly related to visit intention of medical tourists to India; however, the perceived time risk and performance risk are insignificantly associated with the visit intention.

This study is restricted to the opinion of 326 sample respondents consisting of medical tourists who arrived in India through IGI-T3, New Delhi, during October–December 2019. In the future, a similar type of study may be conducted in different parts of the country with a relatively larger sample size

This study addresses the need for advancing the knowledge on the factors in determining visit intention of medical tourists towards India. This knowledge will become very crucial for India's medical tourism industry, which is aiming to attain a competitive edge in the global market.