Recent research indicates that consumers associate nonprofit organizations mainly with the trait “warmth,” whereas for-profit organizations are perceived as being “competent.” Trustworthiness is another dimension of consumer perceptions of nonprofit organizations. This article attempts to combine two strands of research: Aaker, Vohs, and Mogilner’s research on perceptions of warmth and competence and Handy et al.’s and Schlesinger, Mitchell, and Gray’s research on individuals’ perceptions of trustworthiness in nonprofits. Our study indicates that “warmth,” “trustworthiness,” and “competence” are distinct dimensions of patient perceptions of hospitals. Perceptions of these traits vary across different manifestations of ownership status. Nonprofit hospitals are perceived as more trustworthy and warm but less competent than their for-profit competitors. With nonurgent care, analysis shows that only trustworthiness and competence influence patients’ hospital evaluations. Nonprofit hospitals should try to make their ownership status public as well as to alleviate detrimental deviations of perceived competence from actual competence.

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As patient autonomy and consumer sovereignty increase, information provision is considered essential to decrease information asymmetries between healthcare service providers and patients. However, greater availability of third party information sources can have negative side effects. Patients can be confused by the nature, as well as the amount, of quality information when making choices among competing health care providers. Therefore, the present study explores how information may cause patient confusion and affect the behavioral intention to choose a health care provider. Based on a quota sample of German citizens (n = 198), the present study validates a model of patient confusion in the context of hospital choice. The study results reveal that perceived information overload, perceived similarity, and perceived ambiguity of health information impact the affective and cognitive components of patient confusion. Confused patients have a stronger inclination to hastily narrow down their set of possible decision alternatives. Finally, an empirical analysis reveals that the affective and cognitive components of patient confusion mediate perceived information overload, perceived similarity, and perceived ambiguity of information.

In many countries, policy initiatives force the implementation of demand-driven healthcare systems to encourage competition among providers. When actively choosing hospitals, consumers can compare data on the quality of hospital performance among providers. However, patients do not necessarily take full advantage of comparative quality information but instead use a number of readily available proxies to evaluate provider trustworthiness. According to the stereotypic content model, organizational trustworthiness is built on stereotypical perceptions of hospitals' competence and warmth, reflected by visible hospital characteristics such as ownership and teaching status, and size. We introduce a theoretical framework on stereotypic quality perceptions that brings together fragmented findings in health services research on patient quality expectations of hospital characteristics. The model provides a basis for further research and recommendations for improved hospital communication strategies. The study suggests that researchers as well as hospital management should pay more attention to stereotypical patient quality perceptions and their impact on hospital choice to understand patients' quality evaluations better.

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