Effect of Emotion, Expectation, and Privacy on Purchase Intention in WeChat Health Product Consumption: The Mediating Role of Trust.

Ming-Yan Wang,Cheng-Yang Zhou,Neng-Ye Lai,Peng-Zhu Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph16203861

Abstract

With the aging of the population and the upgrading of the consumption structure of national health demand in China, it has become a new trend for the public to actively seek health products and services on social networks. Based on the theory of reasoned behavior and the theory of expectancy confirmation, this study aims to analyze the cognitive factors and their effects on WeChat users’ purchase intention in the process of health product consumption. Considering that safety is a key feature of health products that distinguishes them from other consumer products, the “satisfaction” concept in the expectancy confirmation model is replaced by “trust” in this study. Two hundred and two (202) valid samples were collected by a questionnaire survey to analyze their intentions to buy health products on WeChat. Theoretical models and corresponding research hypotheses were verified by structural equation modeling. The research results show that emotional price and emotional experience are positively correlated with trust and purchase intention. There is an obvious negative correlation between privacy invasion and trust. Expectation confirmation is positively associated with trust. Moreover, the intermediary test shows that trust has completely mediated between emotional price and purchase intention, and trust also has a full intermediary effect on expectation confirmation and purchase intention.

Highlights

With the growth of urbanization and industrialization in China, the impacts on residents’ lifestyle, ecological environment and food safety on health are gradually becoming apparent
The results of this paper show that perception monitoring and perception information disclosure will not affect the trust of users, which is contrary to the previous hypothesis
In China, mobile social media has been widely used in the field of health product consumption, which has had an impact on netizens’ healthy behaviors

Summary

Introduction

With the growth of urbanization and industrialization in China, the impacts on residents’ lifestyle, ecological environment and food safety on health are gradually becoming apparent. Adolescent sub-health aging and chronic diseases have become urgent public health problems which could hinder the improvement of the health level of Chinese residents. With the increase of disposable income of Chinese residents, the public’s health awareness is increasing, and the consumption and demand for health services are gradually improving. How to meet the needs of public healthcare management and promote the development of the health industry has become an inevitable requirement for the sustainable and healthy development of the economy and society. According to the implementation of the “Healthy China Strategy”, China’s health care industry has been further promoted.

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