Effectiveness of Health Communication Technology on Compliance Disposition of Covid-19 Guidelines

Recent research has mostly examined the role of health communication technology (HCT) in patient empowerment and in producing patient-focused outcomes. This study examines HCT in a larger context where it is used as a tool to improve public health. The objective is to examine how HCT is used to monitor Covid-19's spread, and how social factors affect individual assessment of HCT and individual compliance disposition of Covid-19 guidelines. Analyzing data collected from 360 HOT users suggests that the information and system quality of HOT indeed impact users' assessment of its effectiveness and their compliance disposition. However, such effects are strongly mediated by social factors: peer influence and government trust can sway an individual's cognitive judgments of Oovid-19 regardless of HOT's impacts. The findings highlight the importance of social factors in pandemic management and the need to socialize health informatics to make them more effective.