Mental healthcare delivery in China faces a critical adoption gap that digital platforms could bridge, but only if designed around user preferences rather than provider assumptions. Understanding what drives acceptance becomes essential as traditional barriers to mental health treatment persist across urban populations.
This discrete choice experiment with 867 urban Chinese adults revealed that professional engagement ranked as the strongest predictor of service selection, outweighing cost considerations. Participants consistently preferred services with active clinician involvement over purely automated interventions. The research identified six key decision factors: professional engagement level, intervention type, endorsement source, content delivery method, monthly pricing, and privacy policies. Mixed logit modeling showed significant preference heterogeneity across demographic segments, with prior mental health service users, women, and higher-income individuals showing distinct choice patterns.
These findings challenge the prevalent tech-first approach to digital mental health expansion in Asian markets. While cost-effectiveness drives many platform designs, Chinese consumers appear willing to pay premium prices for human professional involvement, suggesting that hybrid models combining technology efficiency with clinician oversight may achieve higher adoption rates than fully automated solutions. The preference patterns also indicate that targeted marketing strategies acknowledging demographic differences could improve service uptake. However, the study's urban focus and discrete choice methodology limit generalizability to rural populations or real-world decision-making contexts. For health systems investing in digital mental health infrastructure, this research suggests that maintaining meaningful professional engagement may be more critical for user adoption than achieving the lowest possible price point.