Trust in AI Doctors: How Credibility and Message Richness in AI-Based Providers Influence Patient Adherence

Abstract

To examine if artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to complement human health providers in telemedicine, this experiment tests different factors that may affect patients' intention to adhere to prescriptions. Participants (N = 261) were randomly assigned to one of 12 conditions: 2 (doctor type: human vs. AI) x 2 (illness severity: high vs. low) x 3 (message richness: text-only prescription vs. with audio vs. with audiovisual). They were then asked to indicate their perceived credibility of the doctor and intention to adhere to the prescription. Results showed that people reported greater perceived credibility toward a human doctor than an AI doctor which, in turn, was positively associated with adherence intention. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between doctor type and message richness, such that the difference in adherence intention for human versus AI doctor was significantly smaller in the text-with-audiovisual condition than that in the text-only condition, indicating that people may start paying less attention to the source and more to the message cues as the message gets richer. These results reflect user responses to a specific type of AI system within a controlled interaction context, and future research should explore how alternative system designs might influence credibility and adherence intention differently.