Consumer Satisfaction with Online Health Information Retrieval: A Model and Empirical Study

This research examines the area of online consumer health information retrieval as a field of study that pertains to consumers' use of the Internet to locate and evaluate health-related information for the purposes of self education and collection of facts to enable informed decision making. A research model exploring the antecedents of consumer satisfaction with online health information retrieval is developed using constructs from the Information Systems and Human Computer Interaction bodies of literature. This model is quantitatively validated using structural equation modeling techniques. The findings of this research provide evidence that content quality, technical adequacy and trust explain a large proportion of the variance in consumer satisfaction with online health information retrieval for consumers. Appearance and specific content on Web sites played a much smaller role in predicting consumer satisfaction with online health information retrieval.