*3.1. Sociodemographic and Health-Related Characteristics*

Among the 1000 respondents, there were 478 men (47.8%) and 522 women (52.2%), with a mean age of 47.04 years (M = 47.04, SD = 15.04) (Table 1). The majority of respondents had a family size of more than two persons (90.1%), and 64.9% were married. Half of the respondents had at least some college education (49.0%), followed by those with only a high school education (48.1%). The most common monthly household income was approximately 2.00–3.99 million KRW (\$1688–\$3369; 31.5%), followed by over 6.00 million KRW (\$5065; 29.4%) and 4.00–5.99 million KRW (\$3377–\$5057; 26.2%) (Table 1). Among the respondents, 88.0% lived in urban areas, and about 9.7% had young children in the home. Regarding occupation status, 47.3% were salary earners, 39.6% were unemployed, and 13.1% were self-employed or held other jobs.

#### *3.2. Avoidance of Healthcare Utilization*

Among the respondents, 26.8% reported that they never avoided visiting hospitals when they were sick (Figure 1). However, 26.6% reported that they did sometimes, 22.3%

often, and 24.3% reported that they "always" avoided healthcare utilization when they were unwell. Table 2 reports the Chi-square statistics for variables related to the avoidance of healthcare utilization and describes the group differences in avoidance behavior. Women (*p* < 0.001) and married respondents (*p* = 0.02) were more likely to avoid healthcare. Group differences among age (*p* < 0.001) and residential area (*p* = 0.01) were statistically significant. Among the residential areas, respondents in the Daegu/Gyeongbuk region reported the highest rate of healthcare avoidance (84.8%). However, group differences between respondents with more than one or no underlying disease were not statistically significant (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Healthcare utilization avoidance among subgroup participants based on gender and the presence of an underlying disease.
