Seeking Health Information in the Information Age: The Role of Internet Self-Efficacy

The study reported here explored Internet self-efficacy in the process of acquiring health information on the World Wide Web. Internet self-efficacy was examined as a partial mediator of exogenous variables reflecting an individual’s motivation to take action to manage his or her health and experience using the Web, and endogenous variables representing information-seeking behaviors and outcomes. The results show that Internet selfefficacy partially mediated the relationship between respondents’ experience using the Web and their attitude about the quality of health information available online as well as the relationship between respondents’ desire for informational involvement and their attitude about information quality. Internet self-efficacy completely mediated the relationships between respondents’ Web experience and the perceived success of a recent information search as well as between respondents’ desire for informational involvement and perceived search success.