Sustainable Governance on the Intention of Medical Tourism in Uzbekistan

Abstract

Medical tourism is a growing niche market with huge potential as the 6th industry of medical services, including an unforgettable trip. Due to these advantages, Uzbekistan hopes to be a leader in central Asia concerning medical tourism. Contrary to this ambitious goal, Uzbekistan patients still prefer going abroad for medical services. Therefore, in order for Uzbekistan to be a hub for medical tourism, the sustainable governance factors of medical tourism need to be found for local patients going overseas. Under this research motivation, this study evaluates how the medical, tourism, and information sharing factors influence behavioral intention based on the structural equation model (SEM) with a random sample of 498 residents in Uzbekistan. Perceived value and behavioral intention are used as a mediating variable and a dependent variable, respectively. The main findings are summarized as follows. First, the medical factor and information sharing are very important factors for behavioral intention, with high coefficient values of 0.399 and 0.516, respectively, while the tourism factor is not influential on the behavioral intention statistically. This implies that Uzbekistani patients do not consider tourism factors as a core condition, instead focusing on the service quality of the medical operation and convenience for foreign patients. Second, in the indirect model, we found that perceived value takes a fully mediating role between medical factors and behavioral intention, while it takes a partially mediating role between information sharing and behavioral intention, implying that strong promotion policies are required for the advantages of tourism and enhanced access to information.

Why is India a popular destination for Bangladeshi medical tourists? A study based on perceived justice by Bangladeshi patients

“…Such incidents cause an inclination to opt for domestic providers and a decreased reliance on foreign or outbound medical tourism. Choi et al (2021) also found the effect of perceived value and satisfaction on customers' behavioural orientation. As patients mostly travel because of a lack of satisfaction and trust in domestic health-care provision, customer satisfaction and trust in domestic clinics and physicians negatively influence a patient's travel intent (Chia and Liao, 2021).…”

“…Such incidents cause an inclination to opt for domestic providers and a decreased reliance on foreign or outbound medical tourism. Choi et al . (2021) also found the effect of perceived value and satisfaction on customers’ behavioural orientation.…”

Dental tourism: factors influencing travelers’ revisit intention to the Mexican border

“…For this reason, the low cost of medical treatments is one of the main factors to attracting dental visitors (Cortez, 2008; Moschis & Chambers, 2009). In this sense, the perceived value of both the medical trip and the treatment by customers is a strategic priority in the dental tourism sector because it positively affects the RI (Keshavarz & Jamshidi, 2018; Cham et al, 2020; Habibi & Rasoolimanesh, 2020; Choi et al, 2021).…”

“…The creation of value perceived by customers is a strategic priority in the medical tourism sector, because it positively affects repurchase intention (Keshavarz & Jamshidi, 2018). Likewise, the perceived value of both the medical trip and the treatment results in positive behavioral intentions to repurchase (Cham et al, 2020;Habibi & Rasoolimanesh, 2020;Choi, Ashurova, & Lee, 2021). Despite this tendency, Alhidari & Alkadhi (2018) concluded that price does not influence repurchase intention or loyalty.…”

Energy Efficiency and Urban Climate Adaption

“…Unfortunately, the conclusions of their research did not match with the reality of their research subjects of governments and industries simply because most of these research papers could not find any missing links in the governance of the policies or strategies. Here, governance is defined as a work-able mechanism for the sustainable performance of economic agents, such as a government or industry [6]. Even though they confirmed their efforts towards E&E issues, there was not significant improvement in any country in the world in even the most successful cases of E&E because all of the economic agents continue to use the traditional paradigm to solve E&E issues; thus, all of these efforts may conflict against their ultimate purpose of economic success.…”