Perceived Community Support, Users' Interactions, and Value Co-Creation in Online Health Community: The Moderating Effect of Social Exclusion.

Wenlong Liu,Rongrong Ji,Yi Jiang,Xiucheng Fan

doi:10.3390/ijerph17010204

Abstract

Online health communities (OHCs) face the same problem as other social media platforms in terms of decreasing activity and user attrition. Drawing upon organizational support theory, this study explores how perceived community support affects user interactions and value co-creation which in turn influence their continuous participation. OHCs act as both health knowledge-sharing platforms and important social media for patients, and thus, interpersonal interactions in OHCs are categorized into health-related and general topic interactions. Considering the identity of patients, this study also examines the moderating effect of user-perceived social exclusion on the relationship between community support and user interaction. A total of 292 valid samples from a diabetic patient community in China were used to examine the proposed hypotheses through structural equation modeling. The results show that: (1) Community support has a positive effect on health topic and general topic interactions; (2) both types of interactions have significant positive effects on users’ perceived functional and social values, while general topic interaction is also related positively to users’ perceived affective value; (3) perceived functional value can result directly in continuous participation, while perceived social value contributes indirectly to continuous participation intention through perceived affective value; and (4) users perceived higher social exclusion are more influenced by community support to participate in health topic interactions than those who perceived lower social exclusion, while no significant difference in general topic interactions between two groups. The results of this study can provide implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Highlights

In recent years, online health communities (OHCs) have become a useful channel for people to seek and share health-related information
This study proposes a framework to examine the relationships among community support, user interactions, perceived co-created value, and continuous participation intention in OHCs
By adopting the organizational support theory and the concept of organizational citizenship By adopting the organizational support theory and the concept of organizational citizenship behavior into the online health community, a virtual organization context, this study proposed behavior into the online health community, a virtual organization context, this study proposed a a framework to understand OHC users’ continuous participation intention from the perspective framework to understand OHC users’ continuous participation intention from the perspective of the of the community’s support, user interactions, and value co-creation

Summary

Introduction

Online health communities (OHCs) have become a useful channel for people to seek and share health-related information. According to the report by the Pew Research Center, 59% of American adults have experience in searching for online health information and 35% of have searched for medical solutions through the Internet for themselves or people close to them who might have a disease [1]. The boom of OHCs worldwide is being accelerated by advancements in Internet technology, leading to its evolution into various forms. The patient-to-doctor communities serve as a bridge between patients and doctors online and provide platforms for doctors to deliver information and consultations to patients [2]. The patient-to-patient communities connect patients with the same diseases and enable them to share information on their condition, treatments as well as

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Discussion

Conclusion