Connections and disconnections between online health information seeking and offline consequences

Online Health Information Seeking (HIS) has become pervasive with critical impacts on consumers' health. Yet, little is known about the connections between consumers' online HIS process and subsequent offline behaviors. To fill this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews by adopting the Critical Incident Technique to understand the real-world search experiences from 24 consumers. We characterized the online HIS around source selection behaviors, information needs, and search starting-point, then further analyzed their impacts on offline emotion change and decision-making. Specifically, we identified that self-diagnosis is a common need for online HIS, where search engines are dominantly used as the starting point. More surprisingly, although mostly being viewed as helpful, online HIS might lead to consumers' extremely negative emotions and decisions. These findings deepen the understanding of consumer-centered health information seeking behaviors and provide insights for designing better interactive technologies to facilitate desirable online-offline transitions and thus promoting the outcomes of healthcare.