The Impact of Persuasive Messages on the Disclosure of Personal Health Information

Abstract

Individuals’ disclosure of personal health information (PHI) holds substantial benefits for providers, but users are often reluctant to disclose. While providers can employ persuasive messages, little is known about their effects in the sensitive context of PHI disclosure. To address this research gap, we conduct a web-based experiment with 529 non-users of health wearables (HWs) to examine the influences of persuasive messages (attribute framing and argument strength) on individuals’ PHI disclosure. We reveal that individuals tend to disclose more PHI when they experience persuasive messages with more positively framed HW attributes or messages with higher argument strength concerning data collection. We enable researchers to uncover the impact of persuasive messages in highly sensitive data environments and provide practitioners with workable suggestions to have individuals disclose more PHI.