Decision Dynamics and Human-Computer Interaction in Online Health Information Seeking

Behavioral economics has become a significant perspective in the evaluation of human judgment and decision-making. In the limited research literature of cognitive biases in online health information seeking (OHIS) behavior, researchers have suggested that more empirical studies are needed in order to generalize how cognitive biases influence the OHIS behavior of health information seekers. This study examines the dynamics of online health information seekers' decision-making behavior through the lens of behavioral economics, and thus behavioral information research (BIR), and incorporates a behavioral economics approach to research OHIS behavior, by conducting online experiment on cognitive biases in OHIS. Specifically, this dissertation research project: (a) conducts a systematic review of cognitive biases and debiasing in OHIS research literature to gain an analytical overview of the area of research, (b) conducts an experimental study on the detection of selected common behavioral cognitive biases (confirmation bias and order effect specifically) and the effectiveness of the use of designed human-computer interaction (HCI) debiasing features based on the principle of cognitive system switching, and (c) conducts an online experimental study on the detection of selected social cognitive biases (authority bias and ethnic-name prejudice specifically) and the effectiveness of HCI debiasing features based on the principle of behavioral nudging with accidentally encountered word priming. The results of the systematic review show that much remains to be done in using the behavioral information research perspective to examine and possibly improve OHIS behavior in terms of the judgment of information quality. The results of the online experiments, in addition to providing significant and nonsignificant evidence for the existence of certain biases in OHIS, adds to the much-needed research replication repository for continuing validation to advance the field of behavioral information research and provides an empirical examination of nudge theory in OHIS using word priming. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed for the advancement of future behavioral information research studies.