Emotional and Cognitive Drivers as Mediators of Brand Trust among Healthcare Professionals in High-End Medical Instruments: Evidence from Hospitals in Upper-North India

Abstract

This study examined how emotional and cognitive drivers relate to brand trust and behavioral intention among healthcare professionals evaluating high-end medical instruments. A simulated cross-sectional dataset representing 450 professionals from hospitals across Upper-North India was analyzed. Emotional drivers captured safety reassurance, emotional confidence, professional pride, anxiety reduction, and brand attachment, while cognitive drivers reflected perceived quality, technological superiority, reliability, clinical accuracy, and perceived value. Brand trust was modeled as a mediator linking these antecedents with continued use, recommendation, brand preference, and procurement choice. Internal consistency, composite reliability, average variance extracted, construct correlations, standardized regression paths, and 5,000-sample bootstrap mediation tests were evaluated. Emotional drivers and cognitive drivers both showed positive associations with brand trust, with the cognitive pathway stronger. Brand trust was positively associated with behavioral intention and partially transmitted the effects of both emotional and cognitive drivers. The model explained 40.0% of the variance in brand trust and 42.6% of the variance in behavioral intention. The findings illustrate how affective confidence and reasoned evaluations can jointly support trust-centered responses to sophisticated medical technologies. Because the dataset was simulated, the estimates should be interpreted as analytical evidence requiring validation with primary hospital-based survey data in future studies.