Understanding knowledge sharing in online health communities: A social cognitive theory perspective

Abstract

With the growing conflict between increased health awareness and the relative shortage of offline medical resources, online health communities (OHCs) have become an important resource for people seeking help with health difficulties. However, patients joining OHCs prefer to learn about health knowledge rather than to share. As a result, the supply and demand of health information in OHC are out of balance. We collected data from users of four major Chinese OHCs using a questionnaire survey to examine the knowledge sharing intention of OHCs users. A total of 324 cases were included in the final sample. We use structural equation modeling approach to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that user environmental factors including informational support and emotional support affect trust toward members. Platform environmental factors including information quality and service quality affect trust toward community. Both trust toward members and trust toward community positively influence community commitment. Community commitment and trust toward members positively influence users’ attitudes toward knowledge sharing. Both community commitment and attitude toward knowledge sharing have been proven to be strong predictors of knowledge sharing intentions.