The relationship among destination image, hospital image, attitude on K-medical tourism: Focusing the Chinese medical tourists

Abstract

The purpose of this study is firstly to measure destination image and hospital image of the tourism spot from Chinese tourist, and secondly to confirm how those factors influence the tourists' attitude toward K-medical tour. For empirical study, a survey was conducted to Chinese tourists, who were the dominant nationality among the foreign tourists in Korea. A total of 320 questionnaires were distributed and 296 questionnaires had returned. After eliminating 18 questionnaires with irrelevant data and missing data, 278 questionnaires were used in the analysis. Most of the respondents were female with 97.8% out of total, and more than 90% of the respondents' frequencies of visit were less than four times, which suggests that the most of the tourists purchase tourism services combined with medical tourism, especially for cosmetic surgery. For achieve the goal of the empirical study, the factor of destination image has been divided into cognitive image and emotional image, and hospital image has been divided into four elements of accessibility, diversity of service, service employee, and physical facility. The results of the path analysis has shown that cognitive image has a significant effect on accessibility, diversity of service and service employee, while it does not have significant effect on physical facility. Emotional image, however, has linked positively with all the components of the hospital image; accessibility, diversity of service, service employee, and physical facility. In addition, in the linkage between hospital image and attitude formation toward K-medical tourism, diversity of service and service employee have shown positive effects on attitude formation, while the other two components, accessibility and physical facility, do not. The results of the study suggest meaningful implications on focusing strategies in the field of K-medical tourism targeting foreign tourists. ? 2017 International Information Institute.