Do/Feel Good: Health Risk Display Formats and Decision-Making

Abstract

Healthcare is experiencing a shift from traditional one-way communication to a two-way communication process in which the patient is expected to be an active participant in the decision. This shift has heightened the need to understand what formats are most effective for communicating health information to patients and the underlying mechanism(s) by which risk information influences decision-making. The goal of this paper is to investigate these questions. We investigate consumer responses to five different presentation formats and test a model of decision-making involving three different decision paths – a cognitive path, an affective path, and a cognitive fluency path. We find that the impact of display format on decision-making is mediated consecutively by verbatim and gist knowledge and that processing fluency enhances this cognitive process as well as creates a path on its own. In addition, we find evidence of an affect-driven decision path. Implications of these findings for better engaging patients and encouraging improved decision-making are discussed.