The e-Commerce Model of Health Websites: An Integration of Technological and Social Psychological Perspectives

Abstract

Health websites have emerged as one of the most popular e-commerce applications in Taiwan recently. However, there are still limited studies simultaneously considering the influence of technological and psychological factors on health websites' outcomes. The study integrates technological factors (web quality: system quality, information quality, and service quality), social psychological factors (perceived benefit, perceived interactivity and perceived trust) and web outcomes (web usage, web satisfaction, and web loyalty) to explore the ecommerce model of health websites. A survey of 1076 users of health websites was conducted to validate the proposed model. The findings show that technological factors have all significantly positive effects on social psychological factors. This study also confirms that social psychological factors are important mediators between technological factors and web outcomes. Meanwhile, with regard to the interrelationship among the three social psychological factors, perceived interactivity influences significantly perceived benefit and perceived trust. Furthermore, web quality, followed by perceived interactivity and web satisfaction in order, has the strongest total effects on web loyalty relative to the other factors. Finally, web quality, followed by perceived interactivity and perceived benefit in order, has the strongest total effects on web satisfaction and usage. This study provides important implications that technological and social psychological aspects of health websites should be simultaneously reinforced by hospitals to achieve better health websites' outcomes.