The Demand and Willingness to Pay for Health Examination Tourism- A Case Study of Nantou County, Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chin-Fu Hsi, 奚進富
• Other Authors: Chia-Lin Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/49850955030394803355

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 應用經濟學系所 === 97 === Health tourism is an internationally emerging industry, and tourism health examination is a part of it. Comparing to medical tourism which concerns from the perspective of medicine, tourism health examination concerns more about health care that suits today’s development in Taiwan better. Nantou County possesses abundant tourism resources which helps it superior to other counties in developing tourism health examination. The research analyzes the tourists in Nantou County to probe into the demand and properties of the tourism health examination market, and also estimate the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and the overall market value in purpose of providing the market information for developing the tourism health examination. Tourism health examination is not yet a steady market form in Nantou County. Most people do not know this emerging industry well. The research divided tourism health examination into two types: the detailed type A, which is from head to toe and the less detailed type B. By sending out questionnaires with explanation for tourism health examination and Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), the research uses the close-ended single-bounded and double-bounded dichotomous choice model to estimate the consumers’ willingness to pay and to analyze how the socio-economic variables of tourists, the tourism variable as well as the health variable affect the willingness to pay. The result shows that the acceptance of type A is 28%, whereas type B has 54% acceptance. Under the single-bounded model, the average willingness to pay for type A is 17,900 dollars and 1,100 dollars for type B. Under the double-bounded model, the average willingness to pay for type A is 12,792 dollars and 1,033 dollars for type B. Thus, the research estimates the overall market value at 31 to 155 hundred million dollars for type A per year and 5 to 24 hundred million dollars for type B per year.