Behavioral Dynamics of AI Trust and Health Care Delays Among Adults: Integrated Cross-Sectional Survey and Agent-Based Modeling Study

This study reveals a nuanced relationship between AI trust and delayed health care-seeking. While trust in AI enhances engagement, it can also lead to delayed care, particularly among patients with chronic conditions or frequent AI users. Integrating survey data with ABM highlights how AI trust and delay behaviors can strengthen one another over time. Our findings indicate that AI health tools should prioritize calibrated decision support rather than full automation to balance autonomy, odds, and decision quality in digital health. Unlike previous studies that focus solely on static associations, this research emphasizes the dynamic interactions between AI trust and delay behaviors.