Background/ problem: Medical tourism has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry; however, research remains fragmented across isolated theoretical perspectives and is concentrated in limited geographic contexts. A key gap concerns how safety perceptions, trust, and psychological needs, rather than cost alone, shape cross-border healthcare decision-making. Objective/ purpose: This systematic literature review synthesizes a decade of scholarship (2015–2025) to investigate the extent to which safety, trust, and psychological factors, rather than cost alone, drive cross-border healthcare decision-making. It proposes an integrated behavioral framework connecting the theory of planned behavior (TPB), protection motivation theory (PMT), self-determination theory (SDT), and trust theory across antecedents, mediating mechanisms, and outcomes to provide a more comprehensive theoretical lens for understanding medical tourism behaviors. Design and Methodology: Following PRISMA guidelines, 34 peer-reviewed Scopus-indexed articles were systematically analyzed to examine behavioral intentions, service quality, satisfaction, and revisit intentions at international medical tourism destinations. Results: The findings suggest that medical tourism is better understood as a safety and trust-driven coping response to healthcare system failure. Safety expectancy and waiting time appeared to be stronger decision drivers than cost considerations in the reviewed studies. Doctor interaction quality consistently emerged as the strongest service quality predictor across the reviewed studies. Conclusion and Implications: This review indicates a potential reframing of medical tourism as a safety and trust-driven behavioral response, highlighting the relevance of the theories (TPB, PMT, SDT) and trust-based explanations. Providers should emphasize safety communication, marketers should strengthen cognitive trust signals, and policymakers should address the constraints of wait time. Future research should adopt cross-cultural and longitudinal designs to clarify these behavioral pathways across contexts.
Background/Problem: Job burnout is a critical and costly issue among frontline hospitality employees, often intensified by destructive leadership styles such as punitive supervision. While the detrimental link between punitive supervision and burnout is established, the precise cascading psychological mechanism—a key focus for theoretical refinement—remains underexplored within behavioral Science. Objective/Purpose: Based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theories, this study examines how punitive supervision impacts job burnout through the sequential mediation of organizational injustice and work alienation. Design and Methodology: Data were collected from frontline employees working in 4- and 5-star hotels in Egypt using a survey-based design. The responses of 306 participants were analyzed with the PROCESS macro, allowing for the examination of both direct and serial indirect effects Results: The findings indicate that punitive supervision is a significant predictor of job burnout. Organizational injustice and work alienation sequentially mediate this relationship, suggesting that employees subjected to punitive supervision perceive unfair treatment, experience alienation, and consequently exhibit higher burnout. These results confirm that both organizational-behavioral and psycho-social mechanisms contribute to understanding burnout in hospitality contexts. Conclusion and Implications: The study highlights the negative consequences of punitive supervision on frontline hotel employees and emphasizes the importance of fairness and engagement-enhancing practices. Managers should adopt supportive supervision, transparent policies, and interventions that reduce employee alienation to enhance well-being, mitigate burnout, and improve overall organizational performance.
Background: The rapid development of digital technology has amplified pleasure-driven behavior with socioeconomic implications, positioning hedonic motivation as a key explanatory concept. However, its interpretation remains divided between psychological and sociological approaches. This gap reflects the lack of integrative studies linking classical behavioral theory to contemporary digital consumption dynamics. Objective: This study aimed to systematically map the intellectual structure of hedonic motivation research by examining publication trends in digital consumption, identifying dominant psychological and sociological themes, and interpreting these patterns through Veblen's classic theory of conspicuous consumption. Design and Methodology: A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 111 articles from the Scopus database, published from 2004 to 2024, using Biblioshiny. This research combines bibliometric analysis with theoretical interpretation. Results: The analysis identifies a significant growth in publications over the past two decades, with major contributions from China, the United States, and Indonesia. The findings confirm the enduring relevance of Veblen's theory, revealing its modern embodiment through social media influencers. Identify three main research clusters: impulse buying, the utilitarian-hedonic dualism, and technology adoption. Conclusion and Implications: This study extends Veblen's theory by linking macro-socioeconomic factors and micro-psychological mechanisms. Specifically, the analysis reveals that hedonic motivation in digital consumption is mediated by social comparison and fear of missing out (FOMO). These findings are useful for: (1) behavioral scientists in designing “digital nudges” that reduce impulse buying; (2) for policymakers in developing digital financial literacy that targets emotional biases; and (3) for educators in creating sustainable consumption awareness curricula.
Background: Nearly half of Thai middle-class employees, aged 40–59 years, lack retirement readiness. They are carrying heavy household debt, postpone saving, underestimate post-retirement expenses, and rely on an underfunded pension system. This gap stems from the common assumption that pre-retirees have already prepared themselves, leading to their needs being overlooked. Objective: This study explored the key conditions that shaped positive financial behaviors and generated actionable guidelines to promote positive financial behaviors and retirement readiness among Thai middle-class employees. Design and Methodology: Based on a constructivist qualitative case study approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with financially successful pre-retirees or retirees, using a purposive snowball sampling technique that continued until data saturation. Documentary evidence was also included for triangulation. Verbatim transcripts underwent reflexive thematic analysis, with member checks and an audit trail ensuring rigor. Findings: The findings indicated that positive financial behaviors supported daily needs, debt management, emergency savings, and life-goals planning. The determinants of these behaviors included attitudes, personal traits, socioeconomic context, and financial knowledge. Actionable strategies involved cultivating self-awareness, learning from role-models, using financial tools, implementing tailored programs, providing hands-on training, and maintaining ongoing tracking and evaluation. Conclusion and Implications: The study’s originality stems from integrating practitioner perspectives to generate strategic behavioral guidelines. These guidelines provide direction for policymakers and educators to design financial programs that clos the intention-action gap and address financial behavioral biases, ultimately enhancing the retirement readiness of Thai pre-retirees and supporting the development of sustained positive financial behaviors.
Background/ problem: With the silverware handicraft sector is an important part of Thailand's cultural economy, employees' inventiveness and creativity have become increasingly important for maintaining competitiveness. Previous studies have mostly concentrated on product design, paying little attention to how organizational and human factors interact to influence such behavior. Objective/ purpose: This study aimed to 1) explore how organizational contexts and individual experiences shape creative and innovative behavior among personnel in the silverware handicraft industry; and 2) to examine the relationships among these factors. Design and Methodology: This study employed an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach. In the qualitative phase, in-depth interviews were conducted with five experienced silverware entrepreneurs, which also informed instrument development for the quantitative phase. Data were collected from 214 employees and analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Results: Qualitative findings revealed that creative and innovative behavior was shaped by leadership roles, organizational systems and policies, organizational climate and culture, employee competencies, and the work environment. Quantitative results showed strong interrelationships among organizational variables, prompting their integration into a higher-order construct-organizational context. Both organizational context (beta = .21, p < .05) and individual attributes (beta = .62, p < .05) had significant positive effects, with individual attributes the stronger predictor. Conclusion and Implications: The findings support the interactionist perspective, showing that creative and innovative behavior arises from the interplay between individual capabilities and organizational conditions. For traditional craft industries, fostering innovation requires aligning supportive organizational contexts with personnel development through continuous learning and participatory practices.
