Purpose
This study aims to develop a better understanding of how online health community (OHC) members with different health literacy (HL) levels benefit from their participation, through the ...analysis and comparison of their resource integration (RI) processes. It investigates through a RI lens how the vulnerability of community members – captured as their level of HL – affects the benefits they derive from participation.
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to investigate the effects of healthcare service users’ vulnerability. Data were collected about their profiles and levels of HL. Furthermore, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted.
Findings
The study demonstrates how low levels of HL act as a barrier to the integration of available online health resources. Participation in OHCs appears less beneficial for vulnerable users. Three types of benefits were identified at the individual level, namely, psychological quality-of-life, physical quality-of-life and learning. Benefits identified at the community level were: content generation and participation in the development of the community.
Originality/value
This study has implications for the understanding of how service users’ activities affect their own outcomes and how the vulnerability of users could be anticipated and considered in the design of the community.
Online Health Communities (OHCs) are a type of self-organizing platform that provide users with access to social support, information, and knowledge transfer opportunities. The medical expertise of ...registered physicians in OHCs plays a crucial role in maintaining the quality of online medical services. However, few studies have examined the effectiveness of OHCs in transferring knowledge between physicians and most do not distinguish between the explicit and tacit knowledge transferred between physicians. This study aims to demonstrate the cross-regional transfer characteristics of medical knowledge, especially tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on data collected from 4716 registered physicians on Lilac Garden (DXY.cn), a leading Chinese OHC, Exponential Random Graph Models are used to (1) examine the overall network and two subnets of tacit and explicit knowledge (i.e., clinical skills and medical information), and (2) identify patterns in the knowledge transferred between physicians, based on regional variations. Analysis of the network shows that physicians located in economically developed regions or regions with sufficient workforces are more likely to transfer medical knowledge to those from poorer regions. Analysis of the subnets demonstrate that only Gross Domestic Product (GDP) flows are supported in the clinical skill network since discussions around tacit knowledge are a direct manifestation of physicians' professional abilities. These findings extend current understanding about social value creation in OHCs by examining the medical knowledge flows generated by physicians between regions with different health resources. Moreover, this study demonstrates the cross-regional transfer characteristics of explicit and tacit knowledge to complement the literature on the effectiveness of OHCs to transfer different types of knowledge.
Background
eHealth literacy is significantly associated with patients’ online information behavior, physician-patient relationship, patient adherence, and health outcomes. As an important product of ...the internet, online health communities (OHCs) can help redistribute idle medical resources, increase medical resource utilization, and improve patient adherence. However, studies on eHealth literacy in OHCs are limited. Therefore, this study examined patients’ eHealth literacy regarding health information–seeking behavior and physician-patient communication in OHCs.
Objective
This study aimed to investigate the association between eHealth literacy in OHCs and patient adherence by employing social cognitive theory.
Methods
This was an empirical study, in which a research model consisting of 1 independent variable (patients’ eHealth literacy), 3 mediators (physician-patient communication in OHCs, patient health information–seeking behavior in OHCs, and patients’ perceived quality of health information in OHCs), 1 dependent variable (patient adherence), and 4 control variables (age, gender, living area, and education level) was established to examine the associations. Multi-item scales were used to measure variables. An anonymous online survey involving 560 participants was conducted through Chinese OHCs in July 2018 to collect data. Partial least squares and structural equation modeling were adopted to analyze data and test hypotheses.
Results
The survey response rate was 79.6% (446/560). The reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were acceptable. Age, gender, living area, and education level were positively associated with patient adherence, and gender was positively associated with physician-patient communication and patients’ perceived quality of internet health information in OHCs. Patients’ eHealth literacy was positively associated with patient adherence through the mediations of physician-patient communication, internet health information–seeking behavior, and perceived quality of internet health information in OHCs.
Conclusions
Results indicate that physician-patient communication, internet health information–seeking behavior, and the perceived quality of internet health information are significantly associated with improving patient adherence via a guiding of eHealth literacy in OHCs. These findings suggest that physicians can understand and guide their patients’ eHealth literacy to improve treatment efficiency; OHCs’ operators should this strengthen the management of information quality, develop user-friendly features, and minimize the gap between the actual and perceived information quality.
Online platforms make it possible for physicians to share online information with the public, however, few studies have explored the underlying mechanism of physicians’ sharing of paid health ...information. Drawing on motivation theory, this study developed a theoretical framework to explore the effects of extrinsic motivation, enjoyment, and professional motivation on the sharing of paid information, as well as the contingent role of income ratio (online to offline) and online reputation. The model was tested with both objective and subjective data, which contain responses from 298 physicians. The results show that extrinsic motivation, enjoyment, and professional motivation play significant roles in inducing physicians to share paid information. Furthermore, income ratio can moderate the effects of motives on paid information sharing. Besides, the effect of professional motivation can be more effective in certain situations (low-level income ratio or high online reputation). This study contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing, online health behaviour, and motivation theory, and provides implications for practitioners.
Purpose
The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online ...health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.
Findings
The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.
Originality/value
This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.
Purpose
Doctor–medical institution collaboration (DMIC) services are an emerging service mode in focal online health communities (OHCs). This new service mode is anticipated to affect user ...satisfaction and doctors' engagement behaviors. However, whether and how DMIC occurs is still ambiguous because the topic is rarely examined. To bridge this gap, this study explores doctors' participation in DMIC services and its effects on their online performance, as well as its effect on patients' evaluation of them on OHC platforms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose hypotheses based on structural holes theory. A unique dataset obtained from one of the most popular OHCs in China is used to test the hypotheses, and difference-in-differences estimation is adopted to test the causality of the relationship.
Findings
The results demonstrate that providing DMIC services improves doctors' online consultation performance and patients' evaluations of them but has no significant effect on doctors' knowledge-sharing performance on OHC platforms. Doctors' knowledge-sharing performance and consultation performance mediate the relationship between participation in DMIC services and patients' evaluation of doctors. Regarding doctors' participation in DMIC services, its impact on doctors' consultation performance and patients' evaluation of them is weaker for doctors with higher professional titles than for doctors with lower professional titles.
Originality/value
The findings clarify the value creation mechanisms of online collaboration between doctors and medical institutions and thereafter facilitate doctors' participation in DMIC services and enhance the sustainable development of OHCs.
Online health communities (OHCs) represent a popular and valuable resource for those seeking health information, support, or advice. They have the potential to reduce dependency on traditional health ...information channels, increase health literacy and empower a broader range of individuals in relation to their health management decisions. Successful communities are characterized by high levels of trust in user-generated contributions, which is reflected in increased engagement and expressed through knowledge adoption and knowledge contribution. However, research shows that the majority of OHCs are composed of passive participants who do not contribute via posts, thereby threatening the sustainability of many communities and their potential for empowerment. Despite this fact, the relationship between trust and engagement, specifically the trust antecedents that influence engagement in the OHC community context has not been adequately explained in past research. In this study, we leverage social capital behavior and social exchange theory frameworks in order to provide a more granular trust-based elucidation of the factors that influence individuals’ engagement in OHCs. We collected data from 410 Brazilian participants of Facebook OHCs and tested the research model using partial least squares. The results confirm two new constructs—online community responsiveness and community support—as trust antecedents that influence engagement in OHCs, resulting in knowledge adoption and knowledge contribution responses. These findings contribute to the trust and engagement literatures and to social media research knowledge. From a practitioner perspective, the study findings can serve as an important guide for moderators and managers seeking to develop trusted and impactful OHCs.
Purpose Knowledge sharing in online health communities (OHCs) disrupts consumers' health information-seeking behavior patterns such as seeking health information and consulting. Based on social ...exchange theory, this study explores how the two dimensions of experts' free knowledge sharing (general and specific) affect customer transactional and nontransactional engagement behavior and how the quality of experts' free knowledge sharing moderates the above relationships. Design/methodology/approach We adopted negative binomial regression models using homepage data of 2,982 experts crawled from Haodf.com using Python. Findings The results show that experts' free general knowledge sharing and free specific knowledge sharing positively facilitate both transactional and nontransactional engagement of consumers. The results also demonstrate that experts' efforts in knowledge-sharing quality weaken the positive effect of their knowledge-sharing quantity on customer engagement. Originality/value This study provides new insights into the importance of experts' free knowledge sharing in OHCs. This study also revealed a “trade-off” between experts' knowledge-sharing quality and quantity. These findings could help OHCs managers optimize knowledge-sharing recommendation mechanisms to encourage experts to share more health knowledge voluntarily and improve the efficiency of healthcare information dissemination to promote customer engagement.
Nowadays, the increasing attention paid to the dark side of social media (SM) in the field of healthcare management has moved both researchers and practitioners to investigate the impact of Web 2.0 ...technologies with reference to SM, because of continuous distortion created by these SM platforms for patients and the real dark side they constitute, which affects both the patient sphere and its relative empowerment.
Based on previous theoretical and managerial contributions, the paper aims to investigate both the bright and dark side of the effects of SM in the healthcare field, which affect improvements in patient empowerment. Notwithstanding, the exploratory study was developed through a common theoretical and conceptual framework to improve the understanding of emerging social and economic dynamics towards the paradigm provided by many studies on the dark side of Web 2.0.
So far, established on previous contributions to the healthcare management domain, the exploratory study identifies a set of variables related to the conceptualisations of patient empowerment and the dark side of SM, with reference to cases of digital users both with and without chronic illnesses.
Moving deeper, matching qualitative and quantitative approaches, the impact of the dark side of SM on patient empowerment was investigated using structural equation modelling through SPSS and R softwares, sampling about 650 individuals on the Italian population using computer-assisted web interviewing.
Finally, results highlight considerable correlations between many dimensions explaining patient empowerment and the dark side of SM, showing a positive effect on the improvement in patient engagement, but potential critical risks and concerns due to a misinterpretation of online information highlighting the dark side of SM.
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