Use of Heuristics in Credibility Judgment of Health Information on Facebook by Different Levels of Health Motivation and Health E-mavens
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper examines Thai Facebook users’ credibility judgments about health information on Facebook based on their differences in levels of health motivation and whether they are health e-mavens. Thai Facebook users (N = 480) responded to questionnaires asking about their health motivation, health e-mavens, and their uses of heuristics in credibility judgment. The study showed that Facebook users applied all five types of heuristics. Significant differences were found in the types of heuristics used across different levels of health e-mavens and across different levels of health motivations. Significant differences were found in the use of three heuristic groups: reputation heuristic, expectancy violation heuristic, and bandwagon heuristic. However, no differences were found in the use of authority heuristic and persuasive intense heuristic.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The manuscript submitted for publication must be the original version, submitted only to this particular journal with no prior acceptance for publication elsewhere in other academic journals. The manuscript must also not violate the copyright issue by means of plagiarism.
References
Bangkok Post. (2018). Thailand makes top 10 in social media use. Accessed on May 27th, 2018. https://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/1420086/thailand-makes-top-10-in-social-media-use
Benigeri, M., & Pluye, P. (2003). Shortcoming of health information on the internet. Health Promotion International, 18(4), 381-386. https://doi.org/10.1039/heapro/dag409
Boster, F. J., Kotowski, M. R., Andrews, K. R., & Serota, K. (2011). Identifying influence: Development and validation of the connectivity, persuasiveness, and maven scales. Journal of Communication, 61(2011), 178-196. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01531.x
Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 752-766. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.5.752
Chen, S., & Chaiken, S. (1999). The heuristic-systematic model in its broader context. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp.73-96). New York: Guilford Press.
Chinthanorm, K. (2008). Perception of importance of factors influencing the credibility of health-related websites (Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University).
Cline, R. J. W., & Haynes, K. M. (2001). Consumer health information seeking on the Internet: The state of the art. Health Education Research, 16(6), 671-692. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/16.6.671
Cochran, W. G. (1963). Sampling techniques (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Eysenbach, G., & Köhler, C. (2002). How do consumers search for and appraise health information on the world wide web? Qualitative study using focus groups, usability tests, and in-depth interviews. BMJ, 324(7337), 573-577. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.324.7337.573
Fieck, L. F., & Price, L. L. (1987). The market maven: A diffuser of marketplace information. Journal of Marketing, 51(1), 83-97. https://doi.org/10.2307/1251146
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Flanagin, A. J., & Metzger, M. J. (2007). The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information. New Media & Society, 9(2), 319-342. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444807075015
Fogg, B. J., & Tseng, S. (1999) The element of computer credibility. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 80-87). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/302979.303001
Hajli, M. N., Sims, J., Featherman, M., & Love, P. E. D. (2015). Credibility of information in online communities. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 23(3), 238-253.
Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow. London: WeLearn.
Kim, S. U., & Syn, S. Y. (2016). Credibility and usefulness of health information on Facebook: A survey study with U.S. college student. Retrieved June 30, 2018, form http://InformationR.net/ir/21-4/paper727.html
Liao, Q. V., & Fu, W. T. (2014). Ages differences in credibility judgments of online health information. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 21(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1145/2534410
Metzger, M. J. (2007). Making sense of credibility on the web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 2078-2091. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20672
Metzger, M. J., & Flanagin, A. J. (2015). Psychological approaches to credibility assessment online. In S. S. Sundar (Ed.), The handbook of the psychology of communication technology (pp. 445-466). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., Eyal, K., Lemus, D. R., & McCann, R. M. (2003). Credibility for the 21 Century: Integrating perspectives on source, message, and media credibility in the contemporary media environment. Annal of the International Communication Association, 27(1), 293-335.
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Medders, R. B. (2010). Social and heuristic approaches to credibility evaluation online. Journal of Communication, 60(2010), 413-439. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01488.x
Moorman, C. (1990). The effects of stimulus and consumer characteristics on utilization of nutrition information. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(3), 362-374. https://doi.org/10.1086/208563
Moorman, C., & Matulich, E. (1993). A model of consumers’ preventive health behaviors: The role of health motivation and health ability. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(2), 208-228. https://doi.org/10.1086/209344
Park, H., Rodger, S., & Stemmle, J. (2011). Health organizations’ use of Facebook for health advertising and promotion. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 62-77. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2011.10722191
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaborative likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-205.
Prybutok, G., & Ryan, S. (2015). Social media: The key to health information access for 18- to 30-year-old college students. Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(4), 132-141. https://doi.org/10.1097/CIN.0000000000000147
Puypirom, Y., & In-Mor, S. (2016). Factors affecting health information searches. New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences, 4(4), 63-72.
https://doi.org/10.18844/prosoc.v4i2.2458
Rieh, S. Y., & Belkin, N. J. (1998). Understanding judgment of information quality and cognitive authority in the WWW. In C.M. Preston (Ed.), Proceeding of the 61st ASIS annual meeting (pp. 279-289). Silver Spring, MD: American Society for Information Science.
Rutten, L. J. F., Squiers, L., & Hesse, B. (2006). Cancer-related information seeking: Hints from the 2003 Health Information National Trend Survey (HINTS). Journal of Health Communication, 11(sup001), 147-156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730600637574.
Self, C. C. (2009). Credibility. In D. W. Stacks, & M. B. Salwen (Eds.), An integrated approach to communication theory and research (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Simon, H. A. (1972). Theories of bounded rationality. Decisions and Organization, 1(1), 161-176.
Statt, D. A. (1997). Understanding the consumer: A psychological approach. London: McMillan Business.
Sun, Y., Liu, M., & Krakow, M. (2015). Health e-mavens: Identifying active online health information users. Health Expectation, 19(5), 1071-1083. https://doi.org//10.1111/hex.12398
Sundar, S. S. (2008). The MAIN model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility. In M. J. Metzger & A. J. Flanagin (Eds.), Digital media, youth, and credibility (pp. 73-100). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sundar, S. S., & Nass, C. (2001). Conceptualizing sources in online news. Journal of Communication, 51(1), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2001.tb02872.x
Tongsawas, J. (2002). Need, exposure and the uses of health information in health websites among internet users in Bangkok [Unpublished master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University].
Tseng, S., & Fogg, B. J. (1999). Credibility and computing technology. Communications of the ACM, 42(5), 39-44. https://doi.org/10.1145/301353.301402
Zhang, Y. (2013). College students’ uses and perception of social networking sites for health and wellness information. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 17(3). https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~yanz/Zhang2012.pdf
Zhang, Y., He, D., & Sang, Y. (2013). Facebook as a platform for health information and communication: A case study of a diabetes group. Journal of Medical System, 37(3), 9942. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-013-9942-7