The relationship between health anxiety and dietary supplement use : online health search as a mediator

Abstract

The prevalence of dietary supplement (DS) use has increased remarkedly in the past decade. Consumption of DS was not only common in people with nutrition deficiency or special health needs, but also popular in people with good health and adequate nutrition intake as research showed. So far studies on the determinants of DS use did not completely explain this phenomenon. This study explored the relationship between health anxiety and DS use and aimed to identify a novel predictor of DS use that could help explain DS use in people who don’t need them. Data was collected from 171 adult participants through online self-report survey. DS use, health anxiety, online DS-related information search, self-efficacy and attitude towards DS were measured. Results showed that health anxiety significantly and positively predicted DS use with age controlled as covariate (𝛽=0.26). Mediation analysis suggested that online DS-related information search partly mediated the relationship between health anxiety and DS use. And self-efficacy significantly moderated the mediated pathway between online search and DS use, while the moderating effect of attitude towards DS on the relationship between health anxiety and online search was not significant. The findings suggested that health anxiety was a significant predictor of DS use, and this relationship was mediated via online information search, with self-efficacy moderating the effect of online search on DS use. This study helped to gain insight into the motivation of DS use and provided a possible explanation for the unnecessary DS use in “worried well” who need DS the least. The association between health anxiety and DS use also suggested that a very high level of DS use may indicate a possibility of high health anxiety in individuals.