Examining medical tourists' intention to visit a tourist destination: Application of an extended MEDTOUR scale in a cosmetic tourism context

Behavioral studies of medical tourists are still limited despite a recent and rapid boom in both the business and academic fields. In 2011, Martin, Ramamonjiarivelo, and Martin proposed their MEDTOUR scale to better understand medical tourists' intention to seek treatment overseas. However, the scale has not been validated through application in a different context to date. The present study aims to fill this gap by examining its reliability and applying it in an extended model with perceived risk and perceived benefit. Based on the results of the data collected from Chinese adults, the MEDTOUR scale achieved an acceptable level of factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity. Support was confirmed for all hypotheses with a relatively weak relation between perceived risk and attitude, as well as perceived behavioral control and behavior intention. This study's findings fully support the prediction of behavior intention to travel to a foreign country for medical treatment and provides some useful findings to help medical tourism marketers and hospitals in developing their strategies.