Medical Service Consumption Features and Social Differentiation of Urban Residents Based on Individual Behavior: A Case Study of the Central Districts of Guangzhou

The provision of urban public services is related to the quality of life and social equity of urban residents, and the investigation of the urban public services consumption features based on micro-individual behavior would help to examine the rationality and equality of the provision distribution. This article analyzes the consumption choice and social differentiation features based on the questionnaire data of Guangzhou City. The results show that the influence of the provision of medical services on the residents' selection of house purchase is less than that of green parks, education and commercial facilities. The expenses, attitude, technical and equipment conditions are the decisive factors for consumption choice of medical services of urban residents, and the influence from distance is small. The travel time of medical services consumption of most urban residents is within 35 minutes on foot or by bus. The expenses of medical service consumption are mainly paid by their own, and the evaluation of medical service consumption is not high totally. As far as social differentiation concerned, high-income groups pay more attention to the service reputation and technical equipments conditions than expenses in the course of consumption choice of medical service. High-income groups always prefer to choose the better district and higher level medical service facilities, and give public medical facilities the highest evaluation, while the middle and low-income groups prefer to choose lower-level medical service facilities when they are sick, or treat the disease by themselves. The spatial distribution of public medical services is balanced relatively, and the private medical facilities are always closer to middle and low-income, that is not similar to the inverse-care law of public resources distribution in the cities of western countries.