Travel Intentions among Foreign Tourists for Medical Treatment in Malaysia: An Empirical Study

AbstractThis study essentially attempts to discover the underlying factors that might affect the foreign tourists’ intention to obtain medical treatment in Malaysia. The applicability of Theory of Planned Behaviour model provides the possibility to investigate the foreign tourists’ intention and to measure tourists’ general antecedent attitudes and feelings towards travelling abroad to seek medical treatment. The quantitative research approach has been used to conduct this study. A survey was carried out at four locations nationwide (Northern Region, Central Region, Southern Region and Eastern Region). The first generation technique was used to test and estimate the complex relationship among the variables. The proposed research model is expected to contribute to an understanding for scholars, marketers, policy makers, and practitioners on how these medical tourists formulate their intention to travel to Malaysia as a medical travel destination in order to increase the inbound market in medical tourism. This adds another contribution to the literature in the medical tourism field, reshaping the definition of medical tourism and having a more inclusive view in medical treatment highlighting the conceptual value of this study. Based on the analysis result, it can be confirmed that only attitude and subjective norm significantly influence the intention to visit for medical treatment in Malaysia, but is not significant for perceived control behaviour. The study concluded with several recommendations and insights that are useful to relevant parties such as Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Ministry of Health, Policy Maker, Public and Private Hospital Management teams as well as Travel Agencies or Companies

The adoption of e-banking among rural SME operators in Malaysia: An integration of TAM and TPB

To enhance the growth of productivity among small to medium enterprises （SMEs） in Malaysia indeed is a challenging task. Several policies were introduced by the government to encourage the use of technology in rural areas. This study integrates the Technology Acceptance Model （ TAM） and Theory of Planned Behaviour （TPB） models on rural SME operator's intention to adopt e-banking. Consistent with past studies, the present study results support the structural relationship among the constructs. Perceived usefulness （PU） and attitude play the primary roles in predicting the SME operators' intention to use e-banking. Attitude can be influenced by perceived usefulness （PU） and perceived ease of use（PEOU）. Therefore, to encourage the use of e- banking, banks should （1） promote the usefulness of e-banking, and （2） educate more rural business operators to use e-banking so that they can learn to operate e-banking easily. The impact generated by subjective norms （SN） is relatively low because the rural business people are familiar with banks' operation affairs and is not computer illiterate. This corroborates the government's policy to educate the rural people on computer applications. In summary, the banks' management should consider the business operators' behavioural beliefs when strategizing their e-banking promotion plans