IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v61y2010i1p13-29.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer health information on the Web: The relationship of visual design and perceptions of credibility

Author

Listed:
  • David Robins
  • Jason Holmes
  • Mary Stansbury

Abstract

Consumer health information has proliferated on the Web. However, because virtually anyone can publish this type of information on the Web, consumers cannot always rely on traditional credibility cues such as reputation of a journal. Instead, they must rely on a variety of cues, including visual presentation, to determine the veracity of information. This study is an examination of the relationship of people's visual design preferences to judgments of credibility of information on consumer health information sites. Subjects were asked to rate their preferences for visual designs of 31 health information sites after a very brief viewing. The sites were then reordered and subjects rated them according to the extent to which they thought the information on the sites was credible. Visual design judgments bore a statistically significant similarity to credibility ratings. Sites with known brands were also highly rated for both credibility and visual design. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • David Robins & Jason Holmes & Mary Stansbury, 2010. "Consumer health information on the Web: The relationship of visual design and perceptions of credibility," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 13-29, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:61:y:2010:i:1:p:13-29
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21224
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21224?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yong Fang & Wenli Zhang & Hua Hu & Jiayi Zhou & Dianliang Xiao & Shaojie Li, 2022. "Adaptive Aging Safety of Guidance Marks in Rail Transit Connection Systems Based on Eye Movement Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-12, January.
    2. Franco Valdez, Ana Dolores & Valdez Cervantes, Alfonso & Motyka, Scott, 2018. "Beauty is truth: The effects of inflated product claims and website interactivity on evaluations of retailers' websites," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 67-74.
    3. Teun Lucassen & Rienco Muilwijk & Matthijs L. Noordzij & Jan Maarten Schraagen, 2013. "Topic familiarity and information skills in online credibility evaluation," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 254-264, February.
    4. Zaiton Hassan & Norhayati Hussin & Hasnah Hashim & Nurul Syfa Mohd Tokiran, 2020. "Information Seeking in Knowledge Society: Choose Right from Wrong," International Journal of Asian Social Science, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 10(3), pages 151-158, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:61:y:2010:i:1:p:13-29. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.