Understand the Impact of Technology Feature in Online Health Communities: Why the Representation of Information Matters

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and their negative socio-economic impact, online health communities (OHCs) where patients can seek informational and emotional support play an essential role in mitigating the impact. However, chronically ill patients encounter a big issue when using OHCs for self-management and health promotion—poor information quality. Grounded on the information quality framework and information-motivation-behavioral skills model, this article investigates how technology feature, specifically the information representation feature, impacts OHC users' health knowledge acquisition and self-efficacy. The findings show that structured health information can positively impact health knowledge acquisition via OHC users' perceptions of information completeness and ease of understanding. A positive impact of health knowledge acquisition on self-efficacy is also found. The findings provide insights into supporting OHCs users through effective utilization of different information representation features.