Exploring the Determinants of Online Health Information-Seeking Behavior Using a Meta-Analytic Approach

Associations Among Online Health Information Seeking Behavior, Online Health Information Perception, and Health Service Utilization: Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND

Seeking online health information can empower individuals to better understand their health concerns, facilitating their ability to manage their health conditions more effectively. It has the potential to change the likelihood and frequency of health service usage. Although existing literature has demonstrated the prevalence of seeking online health information among different populations, the factors affecting online health information perception and discussions on the associations between seeking online health information and health service utilization are limited.

OBJECTIVE

We analyzed the associations between online health information seeking behavior and health service utilization, as well as the online health information perception delivery mechanism.

METHODS

We analyzed data from the Chinese General Social Survey, the first national representative survey conducted in mainland China. The independent variable was the online health information seeking behavior. The outcome variable was health service utilization by the respondents, and online health information perception was selected as the mediating variable in this analysis. Factor analysis was conducted to obtain online health information perception. Multiple regressions were performed to investigate the effect of online health information seeking behavior on physician visits. Bootstrap methods were conducted to test the mediation effects of online health information perception.

RESULTS

This analysis included 1475 cases. Among the participants, 939 (63.66%) sought online health information in the last 12 months. The mean age of the respondents was 46.72 (SD 15.86) years, and 794 (53.83%) were females. After controlling for other variables, individuals with online health information seeking behaviors showed 0.289 times more outpatient visits (P=.003), 0.131 times more traditional Chinese medicine outpatient visits (P=.01), and 0.158 times more Western medicine outpatient visits (P=.007) over the past year compared to those who did not seek health information online. Additionally, multiple regression analyses revealed statistically significant effects of gender, age, and health status on physician visits. The total effect revealed that seeking online health information significantly influenced the total physician visits (β=0.290; P=.003), indicating a certain correlation between online health information seeking behavior and physician visits. Seeking online health information had a significant positive impact on the perception (β=0.265; P<.001). The mediation effects analysis identified that online health information perception led to a significant increase in physician visits with the increase in the online health information seeking behaviors (β=0.232; P=.02).

CONCLUSIONS

The online health information perception of an individual influences the effect online health information seeking has on the frequency of physician visits. The online health information seeking behavior impacts outpatient service utilization both directly and indirectly through online health information perception and significantly increases the frequency of clinic visits after controlling for other variables. Interventions can be explored to improve the health utilization of residents by increasing their online health information perception.

Deciphering Social Commerce: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis Measuring the Social, Technological, and Motivational Dimensions of Consumer Purchase Intentions

Social commerce, as a new business model, is becoming increasingly critical. Even though a large amount of literature examines the determinants of consumer purchase intentions, the evidence needs to be more balanced. Therefore, this quantitative meta-analysis aims to compare and confirm the research results on social commerce from 2010 to 2022 to reconcile the conflicting results. The results indicate that emotional support, relationship quality, and perceived value positively and strongly correlate with purchase intention. In contrast, technical factors (such as Information quality, System quality, and Service quality) exhibited a small influence. Also, we found that culture moderated the relationships between consumer purchase intentions and their causes, except for information support and interactivity. The moderator analysis suggests technical and motivational factors are more important in Eastern than Western culture. For Social factors, the effect size of Western culture is bigger on the relationships of social support, information support, and Emotional support. This study gives insight into the integration factors that affect the breadth and depth of customers’ buying plans, as well as future directions for research that will help management make decisions.

Understanding online health information seeking behavior of older adults: A social cognitive perspective

Introduction

Online health information seeking has been verified to play a crucial role in improving public health and has received close scholarly attention. However, the seeking behavior of older adults, especially the underlying mechanism through which they are motivated to seek health information online, remains unclear. This study addresses the issue by proposing a theoretical model leveraging social cognitive theory.

Methods

IT self-efficacy and IT innovativeness were identified as personal factors and professional support and social support were identified as environmental factors. We conducted a survey that included 347 older people in China and examined the research hypotheses with a structural equation model.

Results

IT self-efficacy and IT innovativeness facilitate older adults to seek health information online by increasing their perceived benefit of using the internet. Additionally, professional support and social support enhanced older adults' online seeking behavior by promoting their health awareness. We also found that perceived benefit displayed a stronger impact than health awareness on older adults' behavior related to searching for health information online.

Conclusion

This study reveals that IT self-efficacy, IT innovativeness, professional support, and social support will promote older adults to seek health information online by enhancing their health awareness and perceived benefit. The findings of this study provide significant theoretical and practical implications.

Trust and Consumers’ Purchase Intention in a Social Commerce Platform: A Meta-Analytic Approach

E-commerce and social media integration are becoming increasingly popular throughout the world, particularly with the emergence of Web 2.0 technology. In a social commerce (SC) environment, trust also plays a vital role in consumers’ purchase intentions. This research aims to achieve consistent findings regarding the concise effect of trust on consumers’ purchase intention and the moderating effect of SC constructs in social commerce platforms. A meta-analysis, including 20 effect sizes from 19 studies, investigated the association between trust and consumers’ purchase intention. The outcomes demonstrate that trust positively influences consumers’ purchase intentions. Meanwhile, moderation analysis points out that trust in sellers has a larger significant effect than other trust objects. Meanwhile, consumers in forums and communities can gain more trust, affecting their purchase intentions. In terms of website types, trust has a similar influence on purchase intention.

Decision Making With an Alternative Mindset in an Online Shopping Environment: Identifying User Intentions Toward Facebook-Commerce

Considering the current global trend in the digital economy, Facebook commerce (f-commerce) is an indispensable component of today’s digital commerce. The purpose of this research is to test the proposed model to validate current theories that evaluate the relationships between online trust and customer f-commerce usage intentions. It has also been proposed to improve usage intention by integrating the relationship between perceived value and trust in electronic commerce (e-commerce). The data was gathered using a structured questionnaire and analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM; n = 435). In this study, gender has been discussed as a moderating factor. The findings describe the positive relationships that exist between antecedents of trust and user intentions toward f-commerce. Furthermore, according to the findings of the study, females are more concerned than males about developing their intentions to utilize f-commerce for online shopping. Theoretical and practical implications are also presented in this study.

Correlates of Older Adults' E-Health Information-Seeking Behaviors

Introduction

The Internet is an important source for health information and a medium for older adults' empowerment in health decision-making and self-caring. Therefore, we aimed to identify the potential motivators and probable barriers of e-health information-seeking behaviors (e-HISB) among older Iranian adults.

Methods

A cross-sectional study assessed the usefulness of self-efficacy, perceived encouragement, positive attitude toward e-HISB, perceived usefulness, challenges of being visited by physicians, and perceived barriers in predicting e-HISB in a sample of 320 older adults in Tabriz, Iran.

Results

The self-efficacy for online information seeking, positive attitude toward e-HISB, and perceived usefulness increased the odds of e-HISB by 12.00%, 24.00%, and 15.00%, respectively. In addition, e-health literacy, conflicting information, distrust of online information, and web designs that were not senior-friendly were the major barriers to e-HISB.

Discussion/Conclusion

The theoretical and practical implications of the motivators and barriers of e-HISB can be instrumental in designing and executing programs aimed at improving e-health literacy among older adults especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A model of digital health communication media use during the Covid-19 pandemic

Purpose

This research aims to develop and test a model of digital health communication media (DHCM) use for healthy food information – DHCM usage – during the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, this research investigated the simultaneous effects of perceived threat of Covid-19, e-health literacy, attitude toward DHCM usage, knowledge toward DHCM usage, facilitating conditions and information quality on the DHCM usage.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical data were collected through a survey. The respondents of the survey are 192 DHCM users who lived in Tangerang Regency. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was performed.

Findings

The DHCM usage during the Covid-19 pandemic is significantly affected by the attitude towards the DHCM usage and the facilitating conditions. However, the DHCM usage during the Covid-19 pandemic is not significantly affected by the perceived threat of Covid-19, e-health literacy, information quality and knowledge of the DHCM usage.

Research limitations/implications

This research was conducted only in Tangerang Regency and employed a purposive sampling technique. Future research should be conducted in other contexts to examine the stability of the research findings.

Practical implications

In order to improve DHCM usage for healthy food information, it is important for building a positive attitude towards DHCM usage and ensuring the availability of the facilitating conditions.

Originality/value

This paper is the first that develops and tests a model of DHCM usage for healthy food information during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Correlation of Online Health Information-Seeking Experience With Health-Related Quality of Life: Cross-Sectional Study Among Non-English-Speaking Female Students in a Religious Community

BACKGROUND

Given the increasing availability of the internet, it has become a common source of health information. However, the effect of this increased access on health needs to be further studied.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate the correlation between online health information-seeking behavior and general health dimensions in a sample of high school students in Iran.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019. A total of 295 female students participated in the study. The data were collected using two validated questionnaires: the e-Health Impact Questionnaire and the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficients using SPSS version 23 (IBM Corp).

RESULTS

The participants moderately used online information in their health-related decisions, and they thought that the internet helped people in health-related decision making. They also thought that the internet could be used to share health experiences with others. Participants had moderate confidence in online health information and stated that the information provided by health websites was moderately understandable and reliable and moderately encouraged and motivated them to play an active role in their health promotion. Nevertheless, the results showed that online health information-seeking experience had no significant correlation with health-related quality of life.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides insights into the effect of using internet information on the health of adolescents. It has important implications for researchers and policy makers to build appropriate policies to maximize the benefit of internet access for health.