Health Information Seeking

Abstract

Health information seeking behavior (HISB), as an active effort to obtain specific health information beyond routine or customary exposure to information sources, has a significant influence on individuals' health behaviors and outcomes. In this entry, we provide a brief summary of HISB, along with its positive and negative outcomes of HISB. We further explain the key sociopsychological antecedents predicting HISB based on the three most well‐known and widely applied theoretical frameworks (i.e., comprehensive model of information seeking, risk information seeking and processing model, planned risk information seeking model). This entry also discusses the implications of health information seeking in everyday life from the perspectives of health literacy and information overload and provides suggestions to make informed health decisions.