When Visual Consistency Persuades: Multimodal Congruence, Health Risk, and Health Information Engagement in Digital Media

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Visual content is central to online health communication, yet little is known about how multimodal relationships are associated with audiences’ click-through choices. Drawing on processing fluency and risk communication perspectives, this study distinguishes image–text congruence from inter-image coherence and examines their linear, nonlinear, and risk-contingent associations with click-through rate (CTR). We analyze 34,341 health-related articles published by 2184 authors. Clicks are modeled relative to impressions using beta-binomial regression with author and publication-date fixed effects. Image–text congruence is positively associated with the probability that an impression converts into a click, whereas inter-image coherence has an inverted U-shaped association with this probability. Moderate coherence is associated with the highest CTR, while excessive similarity corresponds to declining CTR. Higher topic health risk corresponds to a stronger association between image–text congruence and CTR and a weaker high-coherence decline. The results remain consistent across alternative model specifications, visual measures, outlier exclusion, and different observation windows. By distinguishing cross-modal congruence from within-modal coherence, this study clarifies their different persuasive functions and demonstrates that their associations with click-through choice depend on topic health risk. These findings inform research on digital persuasion and the design of online health content.
Funding Information
  • Humanities and Social Science Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (22YJA870001)
  • Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (KYFZ26029)

This publication has 70 references indexed in Scilit: