Understanding online health information consumers' search as a learning process

Social media links with social capital to trust in healthcare facilities: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

Purpose

The paper aims to investigate the most influential social media information sources to trust in healthcare facilities. The article shows a valuable point of reference for understanding how social media becomes the casting of social capital.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper has taken 660 responses from the people who used social media for healthcare information in the mid of 2020 during the pandemic. The people were approached through different social media groups. The paper conducted structural equation modelling (SEM). The result has shown that with the instigating power of social capital where people put trust in social media information during pandemics.

Findings

The findings demonstrated that personal sources, government organisations and healthcare professionals are the most influential sources of social media. In order to effectively ensure the encompassing provision of COVID-19 health services, this article argues that social capital considerations establish trust between healthcare facilities seeking community to healthcare information providers.

Research limitations/implications

This research has signified that social cohesion and concern for community welfare instigated people to engage in social media communication. The inherent social capital belongings influence people to trust the sources of health information from selected sources that appear on social media.

Practical implications

Healthcare policymakers may utilise this intense feeling of belongingness and cohesion of social capital and use social media platforms to spread health-related information.

Originality/value

The study shows social capital has the strength to entice people into healthcare-seeking behaviour. In this era, social capital is reformulated to digital social capital through social media and strongly affects people's trust.

Research on hotspots and evolution paths in the field of health information behavior: a comparison study of bibliometrics based on CNKI and WoS data

Purpose

This study aimed to examine the research hotspots and evolution paths in the field of health information behavior (HIB) in China and abroad, and conduct comparative analysis to better understand its development trajectory globally.

Design/methodology/approach

A keyword search of the relevant literature included in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database and Web of Science (WoS) core collection database was conducted, using the visualized analysis tool CiteSpace V for bibliometric analyses.

Findings

The common research hotspots in China and abroad can be divided into related research on HIB, research on its influencing factors and health information research. Among these, health information-seeking behavior has been the focus of domestic and foreign scholars. From the subdivision perspective, the focus of Chinese and foreign research hotspots differs. In terms of evolutionary path, the initial stage of HIB research in China and abroad revolves around health information and health information-seeking behavior, followed by the influencing factors of HIB; however, the research breakthrough point is the reverse. Then, domestic and foreign research was conducted on different types of HIBs. Regarding the selection of research objects, Chinese and foreign research objects were increasingly diversified.

Research limitations/implications

This study also has several limitations. First, the literature sample only selected the literature in the WoS and CNKI databases, and there may be many HIB-related works published in other databases. Therefore, future research should include other databases. Second, in terms of language, this study selected only Chinese and English literature, but in many countries, important research results on certain topics are usually published in native language, and future research should expand the language selection. Third, this study only conducted national and institutional collaboration network analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis and timeline chart analysis.

Practical implications

The implication of practice can be divided into the following three points. (1) Analyzing the domestic and foreign literature on HIB and identifying highly cooperative institutions and countries in the field of HIB can reveal the research situation of HIB and help researchers establish new research networks in the future. (2) Analyzing the research hotspots and evolutionary paths of HIB at home and abroad is helpful for quickly understanding the development context of this field and grasping the emerging research directions such as HIB of people in close contact with patients, health information exchange behavior, health information avoidance behavior and health information discontinuation behavior, which can help researchers to explore the future research direction in this field, so as to determine the topic and fill the research gap. (3) Combining the analysis of HIB-related research at home and abroad is helpful for professionals to understand the characteristics and rules of HIB of users, consumers and other groups to further optimize and improve health information services.

Originality/value

Comparing and summarizing the research status of HIB in China and globally, and presenting the findings visually, will help researchers better grasp the research overview and hotspot changes in this field, as well as provide a follow-up reference.

The effects of topic familiarity on college students' learning search process

Purpose

This study aims to explore the influence of topic familiarity on the four stages of college students' learning search process.

Design/methodology/approach

This study clarified the effects of topic familiarity on students' learning search process by conducting a simulation experiment based on query formulation, information item selection, information sources and learning output.

Findings

The results characterized users' interaction behaviors in increasing topic familiarity through their use of more task descriptions as queries, increased reformulation of queries, construction of more purposeful query formulation, reduced attention to a topic's basic concept content and increased exploration of academic platform contents.

Originality/value

This study proposed three innovative indicators which were proposed to evaluate the effects of topic familiarity on college students' learning search process, and the adopted metrics were useful for observing differences in college students' learning output as their topic familiarity increased. It contributes to the understanding of a user's search process and learning output to support the optimization function of learning-related information search systems and improve their effect on the user's search process for learning.

Assessing individual behavior towards adoption of telemedicine application during COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from emerging market

Purpose

This study attempts to gain insight into what factors influence individual behavior towards the adoption of telemedicine application during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The research model incorporates two well-known theories namely the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) and DeLone and McLean information success model to examine individual behavior towards the adoption of telemedicine application.

Design/methodology/approach

The research design of this study is based on quantitative research approach. During research survey, 350 valid responses were received from Pakistani citizens and examined to understand citizen's behavior towards the adoption of telemedicine applications. The research model was empirically tested with the latest statistical approach namely variance-based structural equation modeling (VB-SEM).

Findings

The results of the structural equation modeling have revealed that altogether performance expectancy, social influence, effort expectancy, facilitating condition, habit, hedonic motivation, price values, information quality, system quality and service quality explained 77.9% variance in determining user behavior towards adoption of telemedicine application. The predictive relevance of the research model was found substantial in measuring user behavior to adopt telemedicine applications. The research framework is further extended with moderating role of perceived severity between the relationship of user intention and actual usage behavior. Results confirmed that the positive relationship between intention to adopt telemedicine health application and usage behavior will be stronger when perceived severity is higher.

Practical implications

Theoretically, this study integrates extended UTAUT2 and DeLone and McLean information success model and contributes to e-health literature. Practically, this research suggests that by improving user performance expectancy and effort expectancy, managers and healthcare professionals can boost user confidence towards the adoption of telemedicine applications.

Originality/value

This study is unique as it integrates the extended UTAUT2 with DeLone and McLean information success model and perceived severity to investigate user behavior towards adoption of telemedicine application during COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the integration of theories contributes to information system literature in the context of the adoption of telemedicine applications.

How social media fosters the elders' COVID-19 preventive behaviors: perspectives of information value and perceived threat

Purpose

Although crisis communication via social media has engaged academia's attention during the disease outbreak, information value for preventive behaviors is inadequately studied. The purpose of this paper is to cast light on how to strengthen the uptake of older people's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) behavioral outcomes due to information value and perceived threat through social media.

Design/methodology/approach

This study designs a survey and applies structural equation modeling to examine a research framework. A sample comprises 334 Vietnamese older participants who have utilized social media.

Findings

The results illustrate that preventive behaviors are determined by perceived threat (i.e. severity and susceptibility). Furthermore, older people heighten risk perceptions based on information characteristics, including information relevance, informative support and source credibility. Lastly, information relevance is a strong predictor of source credibility.

Practical implications

The findings assist practitioners to enhance crisis communication effectiveness via social media by imparting valuable information to the public. Moreover, this paper offers overarching guidelines on the improvement in credibility with creators, risk consciousness and preventive behaviors.

Originality/value

Although earlier studies focused attentiveness on the power of social media for raising threat perceptions, this work seems the first to unveil informative motives for perceived COVID-19 threat across older individuals, which subsequently presents plausible reasons for behavioral disclosure, including facemask-wearing, hand-washing and social distancing.

Information system for epidemic control: a computational solution addressing successful experiences and main challenges

Purpose

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused a major impact on worldwide public health and economics. The lessons learned from the successful attempts to contain the pandemic escalation revealed that the wise usage of contact tracing and information systems can widely help the containment work of any contagious disease. In this context, this paper investigates other researches on this domain, as well as the main issues related to the practical implementation of such systems and specifies a technical solution.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed solution is based on the automatic identification of relevant contacts between infected or suspected people with susceptible people; inference of contamination risk based on symptoms history, user navigation records and contact information; real-time georeferenced information of population density of infected or suspect people; and automatic individual social distancing recommendation calculated through the individual contamination risk and the worsening of clinical condition risk.

Findings

The solution was specified, prototyped and evaluated by potential users and health authorities. The proposed solution has the potential of becoming a reference on how to coordinate the efforts of health authorities and the population on epidemic control.

Originality/value

This paper proposed an original information system for epidemic control which was applied for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and could be easily extended to other epidemics.