미용성형 의료관광객이 느끼는 통제력이 스트레스 감소 및 만족도 제고에 미치는 영향

To most people, going through a medical process abroad is a highly involving and stressful event. This study proposes and empirically investigates personal control as a factor that has a high capability of reducing stress and enhancing satisfaction associated with consumers’ overseas plastic surgery experience. It postulates one’s perception of control as being affected by behavioral dimension, cognitive dimension, and decisional dimension. Additionally, one’s perceived control is conceptualized to affect one’s stress, satisfaction, and recommendation. Data were collected from 180 Chinese consumers who had visited a large surgery clinic in Seoul. Nine out of twelve hypotheses were supported. First, overall personal control was found to be affected not by cognitive dimension but by both behavioral and decisional dimensions. Second, personal control was found to have significant direct influences upon stress and satisfaction, but not upon recommendation intention. Finally, mediation analyses indicate that both satisfaction and stress serve as meaningful intervening variables, effectively mediating the relationship between personal control and recommendation intention. Such findings of the study suggest a set of meaningful academic and practical implications that are conducive in understanding the psychology underlying foreign plastic surgery consumers visiting Korea.