Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Internet Health Information Search On Health Anxiety

In the Internet era,when users are worried about their health,they frequently visit the Internet to seek health-related information in order to understand their symptoms and treatment methods.However,due to the uneven quality of online health information,excessive or inappropriate online health information seeking may cause some users to exaggerate or misinterpret physical symptoms,leading to excessive health concerns and disease fears,known as "health anxiety".This not only makes online health information unable to solve users’ health problems,but also affects their physical and psychological health.This problem is common at home and abroad,and it is also an inevitable problem in the online health information service.Previous studies have shown that the aggravation of health anxiety in the Internet era is closely related to the increasing use of online health information.However,existing studies have only studied the direct impact of search frequency,search duration on health anxiety,without paying attention to the information search behavior of health anxiety users that may lead to health anxiety,and how online health information seeking causes health anxiety.According to the cognitive behavior theory,health anxiety is mainly caused by users’ irrational beliefs and exaggerated automatic thinking of physical symptoms,resulting in hypochondriac cognition,leading to a series of behaviors of excessive worrying about health status.If we can explore the mechanism of the influence of information search on health anxiety and find out what cognitive and behavioral changes users have after information seeking,it will be helpful to provide more scientific mitigation strategies.Therefore,this study tries to explore the following research problems from the perspective of "health anxiety caused by online health information seeking" :(1)300 disease narrative texts were randomly selected from "hypochondria bar",and subjects in the texts were encoded and statistically analyzed through three-level coding of grounded theory research,so as to explore the online health information search behavior,cognitive and behavioral characteristics of health anxiety users after online seeking,and health anxiety behavior performance.(2)Based on the research results of grounded theory method,a theoretical model of the influence mechanism of online health information search on health anxiety was constructed.(3)Collecting empirical data through questionnaire survey to verify the theoretical model.(4)Updating and verifing the health anxiety measurement tool,so that it can better measure the behavioral characteristics of health anxiety of domestic users under the online health information environment.The conclusions are as follows.Firstly,according to the analysis results of the information search behavior characteristics of the health anxious users,the domestic health anxious users have obvious tendency of "problematic Internet use" behaviors,including the continuous and frequent search for symptom related information after perceiving symptoms,choosing online information as their preferred source of self-reported symptom checking.They pay more attention to negative search results and have some cognitive and attention biases.Secondly,search frequency,search duration,preferred sources of information,and perceived negative search results may trigger health anxiety.Compared with previous studies,this study proposed two new sub-factors: preferred information source and perceived negative search results,and compared with traditional search frequency and search duration,the new subfactors had a more significant impact on health anxiety.In addition,although health anxiety users frequently use online health information,they generally hold negative comments and significant attribution bias on online health information,believing that online health information is the primary cause of health anxiety.Thirdly,combining the research conclusions about cognitive behavioral model in existing studies and the,this study constructed the mechanism model of the influence of online health information seeking on health anxiety based on the grounded theory.Online health information seeking has a direct impact on health anxiety,and also has an indirect impact on health anxiety by changing users’ disease cognition,doctors’ cognitive trust and symptom self-evaluation behavior.Specifically,disease cognition,doctors’ cognitive trust and symptom self-evaluation play a partial mediating effect in the correlation between online health information seeking and health anxiety.Among them,online health information seeking will positively affect users’ disease cognition and symptom self-evaluation,and negatively affect doctors’ cognitive trust.The self-evaluation of disease cognition and symptom can positively affect health anxiety,and the cognitive trust of doctors can negatively affect health anxiety.Unfortunately,the sample data of this study did not support the moderating effect of illness of relatives and friends,media influence and informational social influence on the correlation between online health information seeking and health anxiety.There may be other paths of influence,which need to be further explored in subsequent studies.Therefore,this study continues to emphasize that,as an important factor affecting health anxiety in the Internet era,compared with the search frequency and search duration that have been concerned in previous studies,more attention should be paid to the user’s search information source and the perception and view of the information content obtained from the search results.Previous studies and the conclusions of this study have shown that online health information search may reduce users’ trust in doctors’ professional abilities.Considering the key role of doctors in reconfirming online health information and alleviating health anxiety,we should actively explore the communication mechanism and strategy of using online health information in the "patient-internet-doctor" relationship.Finally,based on the influence mechanism model proposed in this study,from the perspective of three different roles of information user,provider and confirmer,we proposed feasible measures to alleviate online health anxiety and give full play to the advantages of online health information service.