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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1501879
This article is part of the Research Topic Multilevel Medical Security Systems and Big Data in Healthcare: Trends and Developments, Volume II View all 12 articles
Factors Influencing Health Information Acquisition Behavior from a Social Capital Theory Perspective: A Study of Zhihu Users
Provisionally accepted- Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
The rapid development and widespread use of Internet technology have facilitated access to health information for the general public. However, the behavior of acquiring health information is influenced by multiple factors, resulting in differences and even inequalities. This paper aims to explore the influencing factors of user health information acquisition behavior, find feasible ways to optimize such behavior and maximize the utility of health information for users. By utilizing the Zhihu Q&A platform to obtain user health information and integrating social capital theory, the study identifies the influencing factors of user health information acquisition behavior. It utilizes fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to examine these factors as antecedent variables, with the dissemination heat of health information as the outcome variable. The study reveals that the structure, relationships, and cognitive dimensions of social capital significantly impact user health information acquisition behavior. The configuration path for user health information acquisition behavior generated by the fsQCA 3.0 software provides recommendations to maximize the utility of health information.
Keywords: social capital, health inequality, fsQCA, health information acquisition behavior, Influencing factors
Received: 27 Sep 2024; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jia, bao and Lv. 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:
Kun Lv, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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