Perceived Risk and Benefits of Online Health Information Among Parents in Malaysia

In the last decade, studies show that the use of the Internet to access health-related information is rapidly increasing, despite the questionable quality of health information provided on various online sources. Searching for health-related information is often aimed at self-healing or self-improvement of health quality and improving the health quality of other people in our care, such as our children or other family members. Despite the increased use of the Internet to access health information, there is limited research examining how perceived risk and self-efficacy may affect how one perceived the benefits they may obtain from searching health information online, especially among parents in developing countries such as Malaysia. The study shows the significant association between parents' perceived risk and perceived self-efficacy on the benefits of searching for health information online. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) technique. The study also found a positive association between perceived benefits of seeking health information online and their satisfaction with the information retrieved. The Goodness of Fit (GoF) of the model developed in this study is 0.809, which exceeds the cut-off value of 0.36 and shows that the model performs well.