{"title":"The impact of internet use on health investment behavior among middle-aged and elderly people: evidence from China.","authors":"Xin Yang, Mengjie Bie, Yuzheng Zhang, Yundong Li","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1612115","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>With the continuous deepening of global aging, improving the health level of the elderly has become one of the most critical issues. Health investment behavior is the key for middle-aged and elderly people (over 45 years old) to prevent future health risks. This study aims to explore the relationship between Internet use and health investment behavior among middle-aged and elderly people.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A hypothesis model was constructed to explore the impact of internet usage on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people. The research was based on the data of 17,813 middle-aged and elderly people aged 45 and above from the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Quantitative analysis and fixed-effect models were employed to investigate the relationship between internet usage and the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The use of the Internet has a significant positive impact on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people, specifically manifested as a 4.2% increase in the probability of health investment and a 29.8% increase in the scale of health investment. This effect is statistically significant at the 1% level. The accumulation of health information capital plays a mediating role in the relationship between Internet use and the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people, while educational attainment plays a moderating role in this process. In addition, the impact of Internet use on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people is heterogeneous, and this difference is mainly reflected in factors such as place of residence, income level, and age. Overall, Internet use has a more significant impact on the health investment behavior of urban residents, those with better economic conditions, and younger groups.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The positive impact of Internet usage on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people is of great significance. The Internet can provide more opportunities for middle-aged and elderly people to obtain health information. The more they seek health information capital, the more obvious the effect of promoting health investment behavior will be.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"16 ","pages":"1612115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12301404/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1612115","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: With the continuous deepening of global aging, improving the health level of the elderly has become one of the most critical issues. Health investment behavior is the key for middle-aged and elderly people (over 45 years old) to prevent future health risks. This study aims to explore the relationship between Internet use and health investment behavior among middle-aged and elderly people.
Methods: A hypothesis model was constructed to explore the impact of internet usage on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people. The research was based on the data of 17,813 middle-aged and elderly people aged 45 and above from the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Quantitative analysis and fixed-effect models were employed to investigate the relationship between internet usage and the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people.
Results: The use of the Internet has a significant positive impact on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people, specifically manifested as a 4.2% increase in the probability of health investment and a 29.8% increase in the scale of health investment. This effect is statistically significant at the 1% level. The accumulation of health information capital plays a mediating role in the relationship between Internet use and the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people, while educational attainment plays a moderating role in this process. In addition, the impact of Internet use on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people is heterogeneous, and this difference is mainly reflected in factors such as place of residence, income level, and age. Overall, Internet use has a more significant impact on the health investment behavior of urban residents, those with better economic conditions, and younger groups.
Conclusion: The positive impact of Internet usage on the health investment behavior of middle-aged and elderly people is of great significance. The Internet can provide more opportunities for middle-aged and elderly people to obtain health information. The more they seek health information capital, the more obvious the effect of promoting health investment behavior will be.
期刊介绍：
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.
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