Attitudes Toward AI Usage in Patient Health Care: Evidence From a Population Survey Vignette Experiment

Background: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) holds substantial potential to alter diagnostics and treatment in health care settings. However, public attitudes toward AI, including trust and risk perception, are key to its ethical and effective adoption. Despite growing interest, empirical research on the factors shaping public support for AI in health care (particularly in large-scale, representative contexts) remains limited.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate public attitudes toward AI in patient health care, focusing on how AI attributes (autonomy, costs, reliability, and transparency) shape perceptions of support, risk, and personalized care. In addition, it examines the moderating role of sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, educational level, migration background, and subjective health status) in these evaluations. Our study offers novel insights into the relative importance of AI system characteristics for public attitudes and acceptance.

Methods: We conducted a factorial vignette experiment with a probability-based survey of 3030 participants from Germany’s general population. Respondents were presented with hypothetical scenarios involving AI applications in diagnosis and treatment in a hospital setting. Linear regression models assessed the relative influence of AI attributes on the dependent variables (support, risk perception, and personalized care), with additional subgroup analyses to explore heterogeneity by sociodemographic characteristics.

Results: Mean values between 4.2 and 4.4 on a 1-7 scale indicate a generally neutral to slightly negative stance toward AI integration in terms of general support, risk perception, and personalized care expectations, with responses spanning the full scale from strong support to strong opposition. Among the 4 dimensions, reliability emerges as the most influential factor (percentage of explained variance [EV] of up to 10.5%). Respondents expect AI to not only prevent errors but also exceed current reliability standards while strongly disapproving of nontraceable systems (transparency is another important factor, percentage of EV of up to 4%). Costs and autonomy play a comparatively minor role (percentage of EVs of up to 1.5% and 1.3%), with preferences favoring collaborative AI systems over autonomous ones, and higher costs generally leading to rejection. Heterogeneity analysis reveals limited sociodemographic differences, with education and migration background influencing attitudes toward transparency and autonomy, and gender differences primarily affecting cost-related perceptions. Overall, attitudes do not substantially differ between AI applications in diagnosis versus treatment.

Conclusions: Our study fills a critical research gap by identifying the key factors that shape public trust and acceptance of AI in health care, particularly reliability, transparency, and patient-centered approaches. Our findings provide evidence-based recommendations for policy makers, health care providers, and AI developers to enhance trust and accountability, key concerns often overlooked in system development and real-world applications. The study highlights the need for targeted policy and educational initiatives to support the responsible integration of AI in patient care.

doi: 10.2196/70179 Open Access