Reducing information asymmetry and increasing health value co‐creation in a rural healthcare context

Digital platforms offer emerging opportunities for disseminating information to improve decision‐making, motivate behavior changes, and enhance outcomes. However, consumer‐physician asymmetry and traditional service delivery principles create resource utilization conflicts that may hinder health value co‐creation efforts. We address how expert service contexts with high levels of information asymmetry may maximize value co‐creation by encouraging consumers' digital information usage to close the consumer‐physician information gap. Structural equation modeling of rural consumer surveys demonstrates the ancillary value created by supporting consumers' digital resource integration. The results identify how physicians may increase rural consumers' co‐creation of health outcomes by helping consumers utilize digital information to facilitate their activation in value co‐creation. However, physicians and consumers first need to share value perceptions of the digital inputs to maximize consumers' resource integration and co‐creation efforts.