An Analysis of Push and Pull Motivators Investigated in Medical Tourism Research Published From 2000 to 2016

Abstract

Medical tourism is growing in many parts of the world. As such, it should not be surprising that there is a growing body of literature focusing on the nature of scope of this tourism sector. One subset of this literature involves the motivations that tourists have to travel outside their home country for medical care. To develop a better understanding of these motivations, this study investigates the motivators most commonly used in medical tourism research and classifies them with regard to whether they are push or pull motivators. The results reveal that some of the most commonly used pull motivators include lower medical costs, service quality, international accreditation of the medical facilities, and shorter waiting times, while the least commonly used include reputation of the medical practitioners and tourists' social and cultural familiarities with the destinations. With regard to push motivators, the most commonly used are recommendations from friends, doctors, and family, inadequate insurance coverage, and desire for privacy and confidentiality of treatments. The least commonly used are lack of treatment options and distrust in home-country healthcare systems. The study concludes with a discussion of the managerial implications of these results and provides recommendations for further research in the areas of medical tourism.