Short video apps as a health information source: an investigation of affordances, user experience and users’ intention to continue the use of TikTok
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 24 June 2021
Issue publication date: 12 November 2021
Abstract
Purpose
Although leveraging social media to access healthcare information is nothing new, a boom in short video apps offers new potential for disseminating health-related information. However, it is still unclear how short video apps might facilitate and benefit users’ consumption of health information. Furthermore, the technology features of short video apps complicate attempts to conduct research about them; as a consequence, they have been understudied. For addressing these concerns, this study adopts an affordance perspective to investigate the relationship between affordances and user experience and to examine factors that contribute to users’ intention to continue using short video apps to obtain health information.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon affordance theory, we constructed a research model that integrates four types of affordances (livestreaming, searching, meta-voicing and recommending), three types of user experience (immersion, social presence and credibility perception), and user’s intention to continue use. We employed an online survey and obtained a sample of 372 valid responses from TikTok (DouYin) users in China. The partial least squares (PLS) method was used to analyze the data.
Findings
The study found that the user experience, in terms of social presence, immersion and credibility perception, can significantly predict users’ intention to continue using short video apps to obtain health information. Furthermore, the user experience was positively associated with the different affordances provided by the short video apps.
Originality/value
The findings of this study have several implications. First, the study contributes to the health information behavior literature by incorporating the aspect of user experience. Moreover, the study extends the application of affordance theory to users’ health information acquisition, and it carries some practical implications on how to leverage the great potential of short video apps to serve public health communication better.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
We thank guest editors and two anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments on the manuscript. This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71774083 and 72074112).
Citation
Song, S., Zhao, Y.C., Yao, X., Ba, Z. and Zhu, Q. (2021), "Short video apps as a health information source: an investigation of affordances, user experience and users’ intention to continue the use of TikTok", Internet Research, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 2120-2142. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-10-2020-0593
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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