Abstract: This study analyzes residents’ healthcare-seeking behavior preferences and their influencing factors, and interprets residents’ tendency to maintain existing healthcare choices from the perspective of status quo bias theory, so as to provide references for optimizing the healthcare-seeking structure and promoting hierarchical diagnosis and treatment. A questionnaire survey was conducted among residents in Hefei City from November to December 2025 using multi-stage stratified sampling. Univariate analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were performed using SPSS 23.0 software. Results indicate that the mean score of status quo bias was 3.12±0.69. Factors such as gender, per capita monthly household income, chronic disease status, annual frequency of medical visits, self-perceived severity of illness, usual healthcare institution, and healthcare inertia significantly influenced status quo bias (P<0.05), with healthcare inertia having the most substantial impact (β=0.301). Females, low-income individuals, those with chronic diseases, more frequent annual medical visits, self-perceived severe illness, and those seeking care at large hospitals exhibited a stronger tendency to maintain their existing healthcare institutions. The findings suggest that residents’ healthcare-seeking behavior preferences demonstrate a certain degree of stability, and that status quo bias theory provides a behavioral economics perspective for understanding residents’ maintenance of existing healthcare choices. Differentiated strategies should be adopted for different population groups, including reducing institutional switching costs, strengthening continuous care and bidirectional referral coordination, and improving the accessibility and certainty of primary healthcare services, so as to guide residents with a tendency to seek care at higher-level hospitals toward primary care institutions.