The age disparity in the association between Internet use and trust in doctors among Chinese adults (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Doctors have become the focus of social attention, and trust in doctors is related to everyone's health. OBJECTIVE This study examined the association between Internet use behaviors, network information literacy, and trust in doctors. And to analyze the age heterogeneity of the relationship mentioned above and test the mediation role of subjective well-being (SWB). METHODS The data of this study are from the 2020 publicly released data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS). This study used Multiple linear regression to test the association between Internet use behaviors, network information literacy, and trust in doctors. This study also analyzed the age heterogeneity of the relationship mentioned above and tested the mediation role of subjective well-being in such a path with the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method. RESULTS The results of the study found that Internet use including using mobile devices decreased trust in doctors among older adults and increased trust among young adults. SWB played a mediating role (contributing 24.12%, p =0.029) in the young adult sample and a suppressing role (contributing -24.48%, p =0.002) in the older adult sample. However, in mobile device users, improving network information literacy would increase trust in doctors for both older and young adults. SWB also played a mediating role in the young and older samples. CONCLUSIONS The findings contributed to the literature pool by revealing the potential difficulties of Internet function in older adults, and the importance of network information literacy. It highlighted the necessity to guide older people to use the Internet correctly in the Internet era and improve their trust in doctors by improving their network information literacy.