Will Natural Media Make Online Physicians More Trustworthy? The Effect of Media Naturalness on Patients' Intention to Use HIT

Although previous studies have recognized the important role of patients' trust in promoting their intention to use health information technologies (HIT), most of those studies were under the “risk-benefit” theoretical framework. To deepen the understanding of patients' online consultation decisions, this paper develops a dual-path model investigating how patients develop trust beliefs toward online physicians from the perspective of communication. Drawing on media naturalness theory, we propose that HIT media naturalness will improve patients' perception of communication effort from online physicians and decrease communication ambiguity between patients and online physicians. This improved communication will further strengthen patients' trust in online physicians and promote their intention to use HIT. Based on a two-wave time-lagged survey from 361 participants, the empirical results demonstrated that the relationship between HIT media naturalness and patients' intention to use HIT is individually and serially mediated by two chains, including (1) perceived communication effort and patients' trust and (2) perceived communication ambiguity and patients' trust. We thus contribute to the related literature and provide practical implications.