Visualizing wellness: mitigating online health anxiety through information visualization in mobile health applications

Purpose With the development of the health industry in China, health apps have grown substantially. Whether health apps’ information visualization design can help users alleviate or increase health anxiety is yet to be determined. This paper aims to empirically explore the influencing mechanism of information visualization design of health apps on users’ health anxiety. Design/methodology/approach This paper constructed a model of the influencing mechanism of information visualization design of health apps on users’ health anxiety and proposed research hypotheses. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data. It then used SPSS and SmartPLS to test the model hypotheses. Findings The qualities of both interface design and information architecture for health apps had significant negative impacts on users’ health anxiety. Tolerance of uncertainty moderated the effect of information quality in health apps on health anxiety. User engagement had a full mediation effect between information quality and health anxiety. Tolerance of uncertainty moderated the first half of the pathway of information quality’s effect on health anxiety through user engagement. Originality/value This study enhances the understanding of the influence of app visualization design on users’ negative emotion. It quantitatively reveals the caution mechanism of Internet health anxiety from the perspective of information system visualization design. It also bridges the human-computer interaction research with cyberpsychology. The findings provide support for improving the design quality of information visualization of health app and promoting sustainable health app development.