ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2017
The application of Signalling Theory to health-related trust problems: The example of herbal clinics in Ghana and Tanzania.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Extending Signaling Theory in Online Health Communities to Address Medical Information Asymmetry: Systematic Review With Narrative Synthesis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Examining Different Factors in Web-Based Patients' Decision-Making Process: Systematic Review on Digital Platforms for Clinical Decision Support System.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Article
- Logics of acquiring medicines from informal retailers in four African countries.Global health action · 2025Article
- Antimalarial stocking decisions among medicine retailers in Ghana: implications for quality management and control of malaria.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- Decolonising vaccine production: Unpacking Ghanaians' support for made-in-Africa vaccines.Vaccine: X · 2023Article
- Fifty Years of Trust Research in Health Care: A Synthetic Review.The Milbank quarterly · 2023Article
- Impacts of Internet Use on Chinese Patients' Trust-Related Primary Healthcare Utilization.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Traditional healers as client advocates in the HIV-endemic region of Maputo, Mozambique: results from a qualitative study.SAHARA J : journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance · 2021Article
- Monitoring, reporting and regulating medicine quality: tensions between theory and practice in Tanzania.BMJ global health · 2021Article
- Contested or complementary healing paradigms? Women's narratives of COVID-19 remedies in Mwanza, Tanzania.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2021Article
- Conceptual model for pluralistic healthcare behaviour: results from a qualitative study in southwestern Uganda.BMJ open · 2020Article
- A hybrid data envelopment analysis and game theory model for performance measurement in healthcare.Health care management science · 2019Article
- Managing uncertainty in medicine quality in Ghana: The cognitive and affective basis of trust in a high-risk, low-regulation context.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2019Article
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Abstract
In contexts where healthcare regulation is weak and levels of uncertainty high, how do patients decide whom and what to trust? In this paper, we explore the potential for using Signalling Theory (ST, a form of Behavioural Game Theory) to investigate health-related trust problems under conditions of uncertainty, using the empirical example of 'herbal clinics' in Ghana and Tanzania. Qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over an eight-month period (2015-2016) in eight herbal clinics in Ghana and ten in Tanzania, including semi-structured interviews with herbalists (N = 18) and patients (N = 68), plus detailed ethnographic observations and twenty additional key informant interviews. The data were used to explore four ST-derived predictions, relating to herbalists' strategic communication ('signalling') of their trustworthiness to patients, and patients' interpretation of those signals. Signalling Theory is shown to provide a useful analytical framework, allowing us to go beyond the primary trust problem addressed by other researchers - cataloguing observable indicators of trustworthiness - and providing tools for tackling the trickier secondary trust problem, where the trustworthiness of those indicators must be ascertained. Signalling Theory also enables a basis for comparative work between different empirical contexts that share the underlying condition of uncertainty.
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