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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Digital Public Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1415889
This article is part of the Research Topic Reviews in Serious Games and Mobile Health Interventions: Form Design, Implementation, User Engagement, and Behavior Change View all articles

Influence of Chinese Online Patient Trust on Medical Service Intention and Behavior Choice

Provisionally accepted
Chang LIU Chang LIU *Jiaqi Wang Jiaqi Wang Ran Chen Ran Chen Wusi Zhou Wusi Zhou
  • School of Public Administration, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    As a supplement to medical services, telemedicine is of great significance to alleviate the shortage of health resources in China. Based on the traditional consumer behavior measurement model the Technology Acceptance Mode/Theory of Planned Behavior (TAM/TPB), this paper divides online patient trust into six dimensions: perceived risk, personal trust tendency, doctors' credibility, hospitals' credibility, websites' credibility, and system guarantee. On this basis, a structural equation model (SEM) was used to explore the influence of each dimension of online patient trust on online patient intention, behavior choice, and pre-factors. The results show that online patient trust has a significant positive impact on telemedicine behavior intention selection, with a standardized path coefficient being as high as 0.866. Doctors' credibility, system guarantee, and website credibility have significant positive effects on online patient trust, with standardized path coefficients of 0.401, 0.260, and 0.226, respectively. Hospital trustworthiness and personal trust propensity have no significant effect on online patient trust. Perceived risk has a significant negative effect on online patient trust, with a standardized path coefficient of -0.118. On this basis, it can be concluded that only the participation of government, medical subjects, and online patients can effectively reduce perceived risks, improve perceived characteristics of online patients, enhance online patient trust, and promote the real willingness and behavior choice for online medical services, effectively improving the positive role of telemedicine in increasing health benefits to people.

    Keywords: Telemedicine, online patient trust, perceived risk, Online Consumer Behavior, Technology Acceptance Mode/Theory of Planned Behavior

    Received: 11 Apr 2024; Accepted: 08 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 LIU, Wang, Chen and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Chang LIU, School of Public Administration, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, Zhejiang Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.