The impact of patient experience from e-health on conscious competence and medication adherence

While medication adherence (MA) is critical for users' health management upon which eHealth platforms reap benefits, we have scant knowledge on how e-Health affects users' MA. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory (SCT) and the conscious competence model, this study proposes that users' experience from e-Health can affect patient conscious competence, which in turn predicts MA. Both primary and secondary data were collected to validate our hypotheses. Our findings reveal that: (1) both health information competence and health consciousness can positively influence MA; (2) the relationship between social presence and MA is partially mediated by health information competence, while the effect of user engagement on MA is fully mediated by health consciousness. Several theoretical and practical implications can be drawn from this study.