Seeking Health Information on Social Media: A Perspective of Trust, Self-Determination, and Social Support

In the past few years, social media has changed the ways that health seekers seek health information. However, despite the tremendous growth of social media applications in the health-care industry, trust is still among the biggest challenges for social media health services in gaining greater acceptance. Drawn from previous literature on self-determination theory, social support, and trust, this study investigates people's intentions to seek health-information on social media. The authors carefully selected a sample from Italy with subjects who already had experience in seeking health information on social media. The empirical results show that informational support, emotional support, and the satisfaction of people's autonomy and relatedness needs play an important role through trust in influencing people's health-information-seeking intentions on social media. This study is among the first to adopt the theories of self-determination, social support, and trust to investigate people's intentions to seek health information on social media.

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