Abstract
According to the United Nations, males and females should be given equal treatment in physical and psychological services, and healthcare institutions should exert greater efforts to reduce the gap in gender equality. However, this issue has been largely ignored in previous literature on healthcare environments. Designing a hospital environment that focuses on gender differences is critical to academic researchers and practical managers in all healthcare institutions. Thus, as an exploratory effort, this study aims to develop a measurement to assess customer perceptions of gender-friendly hospital environments. To identify and refine the structure of the instrument, two studies are conducted at different hospitals in Taiwan. The exploratory evidence shows there are five factors (i.e., physical design, functional design, marking design, gender perception, and gender-friendly services) and 28 items in the measurement scale of gender-friendly hospital environments. Results also show that gender-friendly hospital environments affect customers’ loyalty and willingness to pay. Based on our findings, hospital practitioners and researchers can adopt the measurement instrument used in this study to deal with the gap of gender equality in healthcare environments.
Highlights
A healthcare physical environment is a place where patients with health conditions go for treatment [1]
Healthcare environment designs have gradually shifted from emphasizing efficiency in terms of costs and clinical functionalities to customer-oriented designs that fit the demands and preferences of current and potential customers [4,5]
Customer loyalty consisted of six items, customer willingness to pay consisted of four items, and the remaining five factors represented the five dimensions of gender-friendly hospital environments
Summary
A healthcare physical environment is a place where patients with health conditions go for treatment [1]. The role of the healthcare physical environment has been a key focus in the holistic treatment of patients [3]. The movement toward customer-oriented designs requires hospitals to consider the holistic physical, psychological, and social well-being of its customers [3]. Despite this shift in hospital environment designs, as discussed in previous literature [1,3,6], the important role of gender differences in hospital environment designs
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