Author

  • Nur Athirah Sumardi

    • Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi Mara Selangor Branch, Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia
    • Malaysia

  • Putri Arissa Balqis Ab Llah

    • Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi Mara Selangor Branch, Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia
    • Malaysia

  • Syarifah Mastura Syed Abu Bakar

    • Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi Mara Selangor Branch, Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia
    • Malaysia

  • Narehan Hassan

    • Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi Mara Selangor Branch, Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia
    • Malaysia

  • Natasha Dzulkalnine

    • Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi Mara Selangor Branch, Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia
    • Malaysia

Abstract

When the world was hit by COVID-19, everything changed, especially the norms and regular everyday activities. Through the previous implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO), Malaysians have now developed a habitual behavior of using the internet to casually engage in their daily routines, ranging from using e-commerce to buy necessities to using the Internet to book a health-related appointment with a clinic. In other words, they are now more comfortable engaging with others through a more convenient way of using the Internet as their main platform of communication. This descriptive research has applied a crosssectional approach where it was to determine the relationship between health communication competence and electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) among internet users in Malaysia. This study has selected the required 400 respondents through quota sampling where each of the four regions of Malaysia was represented by 100 samples. The instrument used for this study was a set of questionnaires consisting of three sections, starting from the demographic background, health communication competence and electronic word of mouth. The findings from the descriptive analysis have indicated that Malaysian internet users have fair health communication competence and correlational analysis findings have demonstrated that health communication competence and its components of adherence in communication, critical and participative communication, and active disease-related communication have significant relationships with the dependent variable. Nonetheless, the results from the multiple regression analysis have found that critical and participative communication was the sole and strongest predictor of electronic word of mouth in health information sharing. This research has fulfilled all three objectives and the findings have supported the four hypotheses formulated. Therefore, given the fact that there was scarce research conducted on this study, it will serve as a promising point to further explore the two variables involved.

Keywords

References

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How to Cite

Sumardi, N. A., Ab Llah, P. A. B., Syed Abu Bakar, S. M., Hassan, N., & Dzulkalnine, N. (2024). The Impact of Health Communication Competence towards Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) in Health Information Sharing among Internet Users in Malaysia. Information Management and Business Review, 16(3S(I)a), 642-650. https://doi.org/10.22610/imbr.v16i3S(I)a.4157

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Copyright (c) 2024 Nur Athirah Sumardi, Putri Arissa Balqis Ab Llah, Syarifah Mastura Syed Abu Bakar, Narehan Hassan, Natasha Dzulkalnine (Author)

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Vol. 16 No. 3S(I)a (2024) Supply Chain Resilience, Islamic Finance & Micro-Influence View issue contents

Published

2024-10-27

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