Seeking Health Information Online: The Moderating Effects of Problematic Situations on User Intention

Lidan Xia; Shengli Deng; Yirong Liu

Open Access

Seeking Health Information Online: The Moderating Effects of Problematic Situations on User Intention

Lidan Xia

Shengli Deng

and

Yirong Liu

| Mar 21, 2017

Journal of Data and Information Science

Volume 2 (2017): Issue 2 (May 2017)

About this article

Cite

Published Online: Mar 21, 2017

Page range: 76 - 95

Received: Sep 12, 2016

Accepted: Feb 22, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0009

Keywords
Health information seeking, Situation, Moderating effect, Urgency, Severity

© 2017 Lidan Xia, Shengli Deng & Yirong Liu

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

The research focus of information-seeking behavior in recent years.

Online health information-seeking intention model.

The impact factors investigated in online health information-seeking research in the last decade.

Type	Overseas researchers		Chinese researchers

	Influencing factor	Resource	Influencing factor	Resource
Demographic	Gender	Cotten & Gupta (2004);	Personal psychological factor and	Zhu & Deng (2015)
characteristics		Yun & Park (2010)	implementation cost
	Race	Yi, Stvilia, & Mon (2012); Ramanadhan & Viswanath (2006);	Cognitive ability, knowledge, and experience	Sun, Wang, & Cao (2015)
		Rooks et al. (2012)
	Education	Ramanadhan & Viswanath (2006);	Gender	Wang (2013)
		Lemire et al. (2008)	Age	Wang (2013)
			Education	Wang (2013)
			Income	Wang (2013)
	Income	Ramanadhan & Viswanath (2006);	Health condition	Zhou & Cai (2014)
		Zhao (2009)
	Internet use level	Neumark et al. (2013)
	Health condition	Shaw et al. (2008)
	Disability level	Liang, Xue, & Chase (2011)
Information	Perceived usefulness	Kim(2015)	Information demand satisfaction	Mo & Deng (2014)
resources	Perceived ease of use	Ajuwon & Popoola (2015);	Reality satisfaction	Mo & Deng (2014)
		Zhang (2011)	Internet interaction and	Mo & Deng (2014)
			risk perception
	Trust level of information	Yun & Park (2010)	Ease of use of search tools and	Zhou & Cai (2014)
			health website construction
	Credibility of website	Lemire et al. (2008)	Information factor	Zhu & Deng (2015)
	Information quality awareness	Xiao et al. (2014)
Social factors	Subjective norm	Chau & Hu (2002);	Social factor	Zhu & Deng (2015)
		Zhang (2011)	Social support	Mo & Deng (2014)
Other factors	Self-efficacy and information anxiety	Lim et al. (2011)	Task type	Zhou & Cai (2014)
	Users’ interaction and emotional	Hether, Murphy, & Valente (2014)	Health self-efficacy and	Mo & Deng (2014)
	support		health consciousness

Reliability and correlation coefficient.

Variable	Mean	SD	alpha	AVE	PU	PEU	SN	UPS	SPS	UI
PU	3.3002	0.68183	0.789	0.610	1
PEU	3.3879	0.71350	0.796	0.513	0.235 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	1
SN	2.8255	0.76891	0.805	0.636	0.376 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.287 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	1
UPS	3.2056	0.92425	0.851	0.536	0.231 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	− 0.030	0.099	1
SPS	2.6402	0.88491	0.717	0.830	0.371 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.080	0.326 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.338 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	1
UI	3.1511	0.78624	0.814	0.691	0.608 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.217 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.472 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.248 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	0.438 p < 0.01 testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation.	1

Hierarchical regression results for user intention.

Variable	Step 1	Step 2
Step 1: Main effects
SPS	0.217 p<0.001.	0.934 p<0.001.
PU	0.432 p<0.001.	0.388
PEU	0.128 p<0.05.	0.355 p<0.05.
SN	0.216 p<0.001.	0.696 p<0.001.
Step 2: Moderations
SPS × PU		0.024
SPS × PEU		− 0.083
SPS × SN		− 0.179 p<0.05.
R²	0.481	0.514
Adjusted R²	0.471	0.496
ΔR²	0.481	0.033
ΔF	44.323 p<0.001.	4.195 p<0.01.

Variable, measurement item, and source.

Variable	Measurement item	Source
UPS	Most health problems that I am seeking on the Internet need to be solved immediately.	Zhang (2014)
	Most health problems that I am seeking on the Internet are urgent.
SPS	Most health problems that I am seeking on the Internet are serious.	Zhang (2014)
	When I meet with serious health problems, I tend to seek health
	information online.
PU	I think using the Internet to seek health information can ease my anxiety	Davis (1989);
	over personal heath.	Liang, Xue, & Chase (2011)
	I think using the Internet to seek health information can increase my
	knowledge of health.
	I think the health information online can solve my problems.
	I think the health information online is useful.
PEU	I have no difficulties with the operation of health information websites.	Davis (1989);
	I do not need to spend a lot of energy in using the Internet to seek health information.	Liang, Xue, & Chase (2011)
	Learning to use health information websites is easy for me.
	Being familiar with the operation of websites makes it very easy for me
	to find health information.
SN	Quite a few people around me will use the Internet to seek health information.	Ajzen (1985);
		Chau & Hu (2001);
	People who have influence on me think I should use the Internet to seek	Chau & Hu (2002)
	health information.
	People who are important to me think I should use the Internet to seek
	health information.
UI	I would like to use the Internet to seek health information.	Taylor & Todd (1995a);
	I often seek health information on the Internet.	Taylor & Todd (1995b);
	I would recommend people around me to use the Internet to seek health information.	Bhattacherjee (2001)

Factor loadings and cross loadings.

	PEU	PU	SN	UI	UPS	SPS
PEU3	0.864	0.099	0.021	0.114	− 0.009	0.015
PEU4	0.828	0.132	0.187	− 0.023	0.018	− 0.015
PEU1	0.741	− 0.161	0.124	0.233	− 0.052	0.014
PEU2	0.677	0.206	0.039	− 0.033	0.007	0.049
PU4	0.147	0.757	0.313	0.100	− 0.024	0.023
PU3	0.021	0.743	0.193	0.141	0.132	0.132
PU2	0.066	0.726	− 0.046	0.350	0.180	0.090
PU1	0.139	0.631	0.037	0.318	0.016	0.174
SN3	0.067	0.132	0.860	0.232	0.051	0.098
SN2	0.048	0.083	0.855	0.247	0.056	0.096
SN1	0.312	0.195	0.662	− 0.009	− 0.042	0.104
UI2	0.031	0.308	0.198	0.760	0.126	0.164
UI3	0.046	0.198	0.339	0.732	0.050	0.143
UI1	0.213	0.366	0.075	0.704	0.082	0.116
UPS2	− 0.032	0.096	− 0.001	0.041	0.915	0.143
UPS1	− 0.002	0.101	0.057	0.135	0.907	0.127
SPS1	0.025	0.146	0.055	0.115	0.258	0.837
SPS2	0.029	0.156	0.218	0.211	0.055	0.825

Demographic description.

Descriptive variable	Item	Frequency	Percentage
Sex	Male	79	36.9%
	Female	135	63.1%
Age	Under age 18	9	4.2%
	18–22 years old	123	57.5%
	23–28 years old	78	36.4%
	More than 28 years old	4	1.9%
Education	Bachelor degree	147	68.7%
	Master degree	58	27.1%
	Ph.D.	9	4.2%
Internet time per day	Within 1 hour	14	6.5%
	1–4 hours	124	57.9%
	5–8 hours	57	26.6%
	Above 8 hours	19	8.9%
Physical condition	Good health	66	30.8%
	Occasionally uncomfortable	141	65.9%
	Often feeling unwell	6	2.8%
	Suffering from a chronic disease	1	0.5%

eISSN:: 2543-683X
Language:: English

Publication timeframe:: 4 times per year
Journal Subjects:: Computer Sciences, Information Technology, Project Management, Databases and Data Mining

Journal RSS Feed

Seeking Health Information Online: The Moderating Effects of Problematic Situations on User Intention

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Mar 21, 2017

Page range: 76 - 95

Received: Sep 12, 2016

Accepted: Feb 22, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0009

Keywords
Health information seeking, Situation, Moderating effect, Urgency, Severity

© 2017 Lidan Xia, Shengli Deng & Yirong Liu

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

The impact factors investigated in online health information-seeking research in the last decade.

Reliability and correlation coefficient.

Hierarchical regression results for user intention.

Variable, measurement item, and source.

Factor loadings and cross loadings.

Demographic description.

Seeking Health Information Online: The Moderating Effects of Problematic Situations on User Intention

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Mar 21, 2017

Page range: 76 - 95

Received: Sep 12, 2016

Accepted: Feb 22, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0009

KeywordsHealth information seeking, Situation, Moderating effect, Urgency, Severity

© 2017 Lidan Xia, Shengli Deng & Yirong Liu

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

The impact factors investigated in online health information-seeking research in the last decade.

Reliability and correlation coefficient.

Hierarchical regression results for user intention.

Variable, measurement item, and source.

Factor loadings and cross loadings.

Demographic description.

Keywords
Health information seeking, Situation, Moderating effect, Urgency, Severity