BackgroundPatient satisfaction is an important measure of healthcare quality as it offers information on the provider’s success at meeting clients’ expectations and is a key determinant of patients’ perspective behavioral intention. The aim of this paper is first to assess the degree of patient satisfaction, and second, to study the relationship between patient satisfaction of healthcare system and a set of socio-economic and healthcare provision indicators.MethodsThis empirical analysis covers 31 countries for the years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012. The dependent variable, the satisfaction index, is defined as the patient satisfaction of their country’s health system. We first construct an index of patient satisfaction and then, at a second stage, this index is related to socio-economic and healthcare provision variables.ResultsOur findings support that there is a strong positive association between patient satisfaction level and healthcare provision indicators, such as nurses and physicians per 100,000 habitants, with the latter being the most important contributor, and a negative association between patient satisfaction level and number of hospital beds. Among the socio-economic variables, public health expenditures greatly shape and positive relate to patient satisfaction, while private spending on health relates negatively. Finally, the elder a patient is, the more satisfied with a country’s healthcare system appears to be.ConclusionsWe conclude that there is a strong positive association between patient satisfaction and public health expenditures, number of physicians and nurses, and the age of the patient, while there is a negative evidence for private health spending and number of hospital beds.

BackgroundUnderstanding the factors that influence eHealth in a country is particularly important for health policy decision makers and the health care market, as it provides critical information to develop targeted and tailored interventions for relevant patient–consumer segments, and further suggests appropriate strategies for training the health illiterate part of the population.ObjectiveThe objective of the study is to assess the eHealth literacy level of Greek citizens, using the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS), and further explore the factors that shape it and are associated with it.MethodsThis empirical study relies on a unique sample of 1064 citizens in Greece in the year 2013. The participants were requested to answer various questions about their ability to solve health-related issues using the Internet, and to provide information about their demographic characteristics and life-style habits. Ordered logit models were used to describe a certain citizen’s likelihood of being eHealth literate.ResultsThe demographic factors show that the probability of an individual being eHealth literate decreases by 23% (P=.001) when the individual ages and increases by 53% (P<.001) when he or she acquires higher level of education. Among the life-style variables, physical exercise appears to be strongly and positively associated with the level of eHealth literacy (P=.001). Additionally, other types of technology literacies, such as computer literacy and information literacy, further enhance the eHealth performance of citizens and have the greatest impact among all factors.ConclusionsThe factors influencing eHealth literacy are complex and interdependent. However, the Internet is a disruptive factor in the relationship between health provider and health consumer. Further research is needed to examine how several factors associate with eHealth literacy, since, the latter is not only related to health care outcomes but also can be a tool for disseminating social inequalities.

AbstractMigration has manifested itself to historic highs, creating divisive views among politicians, policy makers, and individuals. The present paper studies the Europeans’ attitudes toward immigration, focusing particularly on the role of social capital. Based on 267,282 respondents from 22 countries and over the period 2002–2014, we find that despite the eventful past years, Europeans, on average, are positive toward immigrants with the North European countries to be the least xenophobic. A salient finding of our analysis is that regardless of the impact of other contextual factors, namely, a country’s macroeconomic conditions, ethnic diversity, cultural origin, and individuals’ attributes, social capital associates with positive attitudes toward all immigrants, independent of their background. Furthermore, social capital moderates the negative effects of perceived threat on people’s opinions about immigrants.

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Background of contextPriority setting and resource allocation across various healthcare functions are critical issues in health policy and strategic decision making. As health resources are limited while there are so many health challenges to resolve, consumers and payers have to make difficult decisions about expenditure allocation.ObjectiveOur research focus on the (dis)agreement between citizens' preferences and actual public health expenditure across broad healthcare functions, on whether this (dis)agreement is persistent, on whether various demographic factors amplify this (dis)agreement and to derive useful implications for public health policies.Setting and participantsUsing survey data of 3029 citizens in Greece for the year 2012 and employing logit estimation techniques, we analysed the effect of demographic and other factors in shaping citizens' (dis)agreement with public health expenditure allocation.ResultsOur results demonstrate the important role of income, family members and residence in shaping citizens' preferences regarding health expenditure priorities in almost all healthcare functions, while other demographic factors such as job, age, gender and marital status do partly associate and play a significant role.ConclusionsGovernment should encourage the citizens' participation in the decision‐making process in order to eliminate the unveiled and significant disagreement between citizens' preferences and actual public health expenditure across all healthcare functions.

Travel and tourism is one of the most important activities worldwide that generates billions of income each year. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (2018a), the total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP in 2017 was USD 8,272.3bn (10.4% of GDP) and this is expected to rise by 4% to USD 12,450.1bn (11.7% of GDP) in 2018. In total, Travel and Tourism in the United Arab Emirates generated AED154.1bn (USD 41,950.5mn), accounted for 11.3% of GDP in 2017 and is expected to accelerate to 4.9% in 2018, and 10.6% in 2028 (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018b). The statistics noted that the number of international tourists visiting the UAE grew by 6.5% in 2017 compared to 2016 (Gulf News, 2018). According to the Dubai Statistics Center (2018), in 2017 the number of tourists who visited Dubai increased by 6% relatively to the previous year (from 14,900,000 to 15,790,000). Despite the increasing number of tourists each year, empirical evidence evaluating Dubai's specific destination image is recent and scarce (Buonincontri & Micera, 2016; Del Vecchio & Passiante, 2017; Khan et al, 2017). This highlights that, the opinions of distinct participants, and the view of visitors is held only in limited scope (Liberato, et al, 2018). Provided that the primary objectives of research on tourist strategies and initiatives are to create better experiences and to improve the marketing and management procedures of destinations from a tourist point of view

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Quality of care from the patient's perspective and patient satisfaction are two major multidimensional concepts that are used several times interchangeably. Patient satisfaction is a topic that is important both to medical (health) providers, the patients (consumers) and other third-party stakeholders in the medical care industry; it is, therefore, a dominant concept in quality assurance and quality improvement programmes. Patient satisfaction is an important measure of healthcare quality because it offers information on the provider's success at meeting the expectations of most relevance to the client. The importance of quality in the health care sector has been recognized recently, but it has been accelerated over the past years through the development of quality assurance, quality improvement programmes and patients' agendas. Patients are the ones situated at the front lines of care; therefore their opinion may provide useful insights into the quality of healthcare in different European systems, nevertheless the methodological limitations that should be taken into consideration.