Fostering Participant Health Knowledge and Attitudes: An Econometric Study of a Chronic Disease-Focused Online Health Community
Abstract
Health consumers are increasingly participating in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online health communities (OHCs) to receive health-related support and to provide assistance and support to others. However, questions remain as to how individual OHC participants are affected by the relationships they have established within an OHC and how the content exchanged between OHC participants impacts individual-level health knowledge and attitudes. To address these open questions, we develop a model that integrates participant network position (i.e., structural social capital) in an OHC, informational and emotional support exchange, and downstream individual-level health knowledge and attitudes. Based on a panel dataset collected from nine chronic disease-focused discussion boards within an OHC platform, we find that structural social capital is indeed a significant antecedent to social support exchange within an OHC and, interestingly, that social support provisioning (i.e., proactively aiding others) has a stronger effect than social support receipt on health literacy and health attitude improvement.
Recommended Citation
Chen, L., Baird, A., & Straub, D. (2019). Fostering Participant Health Knowledge and Attitudes: An Econometric Study of a Chronic Disease-Focused Online Health Community. Journal of Management Information Systems, 36(1), pp. 194-229. Routledge.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2018.1550547
Department(s)
Business and Information Technology
Keywords and Phrases
Chronic Disease; Health Attitudes; Health Knowledge; Health Literacy; Machine Learning; Online Health Communities; Social Network Analysis; Social Support Exchange; Structural Social Capital
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0742-1222; 1557-928X
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2019 Routledge, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2019