Drivers of medical spending behaviour amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Heuristic or systematic

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has been creating unprecedented chaos and it could forever alter the way people live and work. Experiencing multiple waves of pandemic attacks could make people evolve their perceived risks about the health crisis, change their healthcare behaviours and medical spending to deal with the changing threats over time. OBJECTIVES: Even though there has been a great dealt of research on personal healthcare behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic, the individual decision on medical spending has not been well explored. This study uses the health belief model and heuristic-systematic information processing theory to study the key drivers of medical spending behaviour as the COVID-19 pandemic evolved in Vietnam. METHODS: Two surveys were conducted during the first (April 2020) and second waves (August 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sample size of 1037 cases. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was employed to explore the structural relationships between health-seeking behaviours, pandemic perceived risks, panic buying, and demographic factors and how these sets of factors drive medical spending behaviours over time. RESULTS: Comparing the two pandemic waves, this study finds significant distinctions in how people evaluate the risks of the pandemic and process information to make decisions about their medical spending. People were primarily influenced by the heuristic processes of panic buying patterns (β = 0.313, p < 0.001) and the health-related established habits in the first wave. Only in the second wave of the pandemic, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic perceived risk has been recognized as a significant factor on medical spending via the comparison between perceived risks of the first and second pandemic waves (β = 0.262, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study explores how individuals formulate their spending decisions in extreme conditions and provide valuable insights to help governments and institutions plan their policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic more effectively.