Online Health Information Seeking: An Italian Case Study for Analyzing Citizens’ Behavior and Perception

Alessia D’Andrea, Patrizia Grifoni () and Fernando Ferri
Additional contact information
Alessia D’Andrea: Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, 00185 Rome, Italy
Patrizia Grifoni: Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, 00185 Rome, Italy
Fernando Ferri: Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, 00185 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 2, 1-25

Abstract: This study aims to understand people’s behavior when searching for online health information (and COVID-19 information) and their perception of the trustworthiness and credibility of the searched information, the actors, and sources used to obtain it. A questionnaire addressed to people who permanently live in Italy between ages 19 and 60 has been used to collect data. Data extracted from the analysis are reassuring from the point of view of trust and credibility both in the actors and in the sources used to obtain information on health and COVID-19. A correlation between the analyzed individual features, the online health information-seeking behavior, and perception resulted from the analysis. The study also underlined a positive correlation between the perception of the influence of information on the knowledge of health problems and the ability to identify false online health information, and between the experience in detecting false health online information and the ability to detect it. Finally, a positive correlation also resulted between the experience in finding online health information and the experience in finding false COVID-19 information.

Keywords: health information; COVID-19; information-seeking behavior; fake information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1076/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1076/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:2:p:1076-:d:1028245

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().