Dark side consequences of cyberchondria: an empirical investigation
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0222 |
| Published date | 14 February 2022 |
| Date | 14 February 2022 |
| Pages | 801-817 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Abdul Wahid Khan,Jatin Pandey |
Dark side consequences of
cyberchondria:
an empirical investigation
Abdul Wahid Khan and Jatin Pandey
Indian Institute of Management Indore, Indore, India
Abstract
Purpose –Cyberchondria refers to the repeated and excessive search for health-related information online,
associated with increased health anxiety. This paper utilizes the protection motivationtheory to investigate the
negative behavioral consequences of cyberchondria that pose health risks to users, such as trust in the
physician, propensity to self-medicate, and therapy compliance.
Design/methodology/approach–The data for the study were collected from a sample of 317 participants in
India using an online survey and form. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling.
Findings –Cyberchondria negatively affects the trust in physician and positively affects the propensity to
self-medicate. Trust in physician negatively affects the propensity to self-medicate and positively affects
therapy compliance. Furthermore, trust in physician partially mediates the relationship between
cyberchondria and the propensity to self-medicate and completely mediates the relationship between
cyberchondria and therapy compliance. Cyberchondria has no direct significant effect on therapy compliance.
Research limitations/implications –Researchers need to examine other behavioral or psychological
factors affected by the reduced trust in physicians due to cyberchondria.
Practical implications –Physicians and healt h care providers should refocus on patients with
cyberchondria and regain their trust through quality interactions and services. Policymakers may consider
regulating online health information publication to set the standards of information quality and source.
Websites and platforms publishing health information online should distinctly label verified information.
Originality/value –This study investiga tes the damaging eff ects of cyberchondri a’s behavioral
consequences that pose health risks to users.
Keywords Cyberchondria, Health anxiety, Protection motivation theory, Health information, Information
search behavior, Problematic Internet use, Mental well-being
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
With the penetration of the Internet into our daily lives, people find it convenient to receive
quick answers from Internet searches. But are they always beneficial or do they sometimes
turn harmful? For queries in a critical domain such as health, misinformation online can lead
to severe consequences. The search engine Google receives 7% health-related queries
globally, translating to around one billion daily health-related searches (Murphy, 2019). While
seeking health information online is typical behavior, encou ntering ambiguous and
misleading information confuses Internet users into wrong decisions or abnormal
behaviors. Cyberchondria, one such strange behavior, is defined as “excessive or repeated
search for health-related information on the Internet, driven by distress or anxiety about
health, which only amplifies such distress or anxiety”(Starcevic and Berle, 2013, p. 206). The
term first appeared in the popular media in 1999 (Starcevic et al., 2020) and is derived from the
term hypochondria, which refers to abnormal chronic anxiety about one’s health. The use of
the Internet for health-related information search has increased from 33% in 2007 to 51% in
2016 in the UK, where 82% of adults reported using the Internet daily (Office for National
Statistics, 2017). Further, Tyrer et al. (2019) found that health anxiety among patients in US
clinics increased from 14.9% in 2006 to 19.9% in 2010 due to more health information search
online and cyberchondria. As the online health information search trend proliferates, the
associated health anxiety and cyberchondria necessitates further exploration.
Dark side
consequences
of
cyberchondria
801
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 9 August 2021
Revised 15 November 2021
18 January 2022
Accepted 27 January 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 5, 2022
pp. 801-817
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0222
Cyberchondria is potentially problematic for multiple stakeholders. First, it concerns
public health as those suffering from it may face reduced quality of life and functional
impairment (Mathes et al., 2018) which, in turn, may lead to deprioritizing or neglecting their
duties at home or the workplace, including ignoring relationships and shunning a social life
(Starcevic et al., 2020). This alarms not only users with cyberchondria but also the overall
public health. Second, it concerns health care providers such as hospitals, physicians, etc.,
who face difficulty in treating patients who also suffer from health anxiety due to
cyberchondria.
Existing research has examined cyberchondria’s several antecedents and consequences
(Zheng et al., 2020). Various factors are found to cause cyberchondria, such as neuroticism,
uncertainty intolerance (Bajcar and Babiak, 2020), sensitivity for anxiety (Joki
c-Begi
cet al.,
2019), etc. Cyberchondria leads to several ramifications such as psychological outcomes –
problems with mental well-being and health (Makarla et al., 2019), reduced satisfaction with
physician outcomes (Tanis et al., 2016), and decreased perceived life quality (Mathes et al.,
2018)–and behavioral effects –functional impairment (Mathes et al., 2018), increased
healthcare utilization (Barke et al., 2016), and problematic use of the Internet (Fergus and
Spada, 2017). Among behavioral outcomes, existing research is ambivalent concerning
whether a patient’s healthcare utilization and relationship with a physician would possibly
improve with the patient being better informed or deteriorate with the patient being
misinformed (Starcevic et al., 2020;Tanis et al., 2016). For instance, Barke et al. (2016) and
Mathes et al. (2018) discovered that cyberchondriacs tend to utilize healthcare more,
presumably to seek reassurance about the anxiety generated from the overload of health-
related information online. Higher healthcare utilization may indicate that such people have a
better relationship with health care providers such as physicians. Still, contrary to this,
Eichenberg and Schott (2019) found that cyberchondriacs also hop doctors and prefer to
order non-prescribed medicines online more often. Further, the consequences of such
improvement or deterioration in the relationship between patients and physicians remain
underexplored.
Understanding the negative consequences of cyberchondria on users’relationship with
physicians and the healthcare system will help clarify the ambivalent findings from existing
research. Further, investigating such consequences of this change in the user-physician
relationship will help various stakeholders, such as information system designers, healthcare
providers, and policymakers, understand the impact of cyberchondria on users’health
behavior. Given the critical gaps in the literature on cyberchondria, we explore the following
research questions:
RQ1. How does cyberchondria affect a user’s relationship with the physician?
RQ2. What is the effect of cyberchondria on users’health related behavior due to
changed user-physician relationships?
This study addresses the research questions by examining the effect of cyberchondria on the
trust in physicians. Thereupon, we investigate the impact of cyberchondria on two
subsequent health behaviors –the propensity to self-medicate and therapy compliance.
Further, we test the mediating effect of the trust in physicians on the relationship between
cyberchondria and consequent health behaviors. We applied the protection motivation
theory (PMT) as the underlying theory to support our research model. Additionally, we
employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze data.
This study contributes theoretically by exploring the relationship of cyberchondria with
novel factors such as trust in physician, propensity to self-medicate, and therapy compliance.
We conceptualized cyberchondria and its consequences by drawing from the PMT. Our
research adds to the cross-domain of information systems, psychiatry, and healthcare. This
AJIM
74,5
802
To continue reading
Request your trial