Extending the theory of planned behaviour to foreign students’ perceptions of traditional Chinese medical tourism

Abstract

Medical tourism is becoming an increasingly important component of the international tourism industry, and Chinese medical tourists make up a big percentage of this growing tourism market segment. Most previous studies on Chinese medical tourism have focused on Chinese outbound medical tourism, but there has little research undertaken as yet, on foreign tourists’ perception towards traditional Chinese medical tourism. Specifically, most of the previous studies utilized the measurement scale of destination image in medical tourism research, resulting in a limited representation of the nature of medical tourism. This study aims to examine the relationship between attitude, subjective norm (SN), perceived behavioural control (PBC), familiarity, perceived ease of visa application (PEVA) and intention toward traditional Chinese medical tourism. A quantitative approach was used, adopting a survey methodology involving 344 foreigners which was followed by subsequent empirical testing of the postulated hypotheses. The results suggested that attitude, PBC, familiarity and PEVA positively influence intention. PEVA positively influences attitude, PBC and intention respectively. Results also demonstrated that familiarity influenced attitude and PBC, and SN positively influenced familiarity. This study expands the existing knowledge on how PEVA and familiarity influenced visitation in medical tourism literature which can benefit key stakeholders in the tourism industry.