Understanding patients’ trust toward community healthcare providers under different primary care settings in China: Impact of hospital ownership and registration mode

China is currently undertaking healthcare reform, and promoting general practitioner (GP) practice is a major improvement. The key to the success of the GP practice is whether or not patients are willing to accept and trust in GPs in community healthcare centers (CHCs). The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of hospital ownership (public or private) and registration mode (registering with a CHC or a GP on patients' trust in community health services. A user experiment was conducted, and 204 nonstudent participants were invited to finish simulated registration tasks in a self-developed online registration system. Patients' trust in CHCs, GPs, and GPs' treatment outcomes was measured. The results indicated that patients had a significantly higher level of trust in private CHCs and private sector GPs, but they showed a higher level of trust in the treatment outcomes of public sector GPs due to the influence of their past medical experience seeing community doctors. The registration mode only influenced patients' trust in GPs' professional skills, that is, patients had a higher level of trust in GPs' professional skills when registering with CHCs compared to registering with individual GPs.