Preventive healthcare behaviour involves voluntary actions by consumers to maintain health and reduce lifestyle disease risks. This article explores individual and social factors driving primordial preventive healthcare behaviour and its impact on subjective well-being. Using a mixed-method approach, the proposed primordial preventive healthcare behaviour model identified digital health information seeking, health consciousness, social support, health literacy, self-efficacy, response-efficacy and health value as key antecedents to primordial preventive healthcare behaviour, which positively influence subjective well-being. Data from 406 urban Indians were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling to test the framework. Nine relationships were significant, with the seven factors explaining 25.3% of the variance in primordial preventive healthcare behaviour adoption. Importance-performance map analysis confirmed response-efficacy as the most important, and health literacy as the highest-performing predictor. Primordial preventive healthcare behaviour significantly impacted subjective well-being (β = 0.379), explaining 14.3% of its variance. Multi-group analysis showed gender moderated certain relationships. This study offers significant academic, practical and policy-level contributions. It extends the preventive healthcare behaviour model by integrating digital health information seeking, health literacy, social support and subjective well-being. It highlights the need for targeted digital health campaigns to improve health literacy and grassroots engagement. The findings provide strategic insights for policymakers to enhance public health awareness and preventive initiatives. Promoting primordial preventive healthcare behaviour can lower healthcare costs and improve societal well-being.
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