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Why People Are Willing to Provide Social Support in Online Health Communities: Evidence from Social Exchange Perspective

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Smart Health (ICSH 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10983))

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Abstract

More and more people in china are increasingly using Internet as a major source of health-related information in recent years. Online healthcare communities (OHCs) are interesting in this regard, appearing to serve as virtual communities for people to provide social support. However, the development of OHCs requires the active participation of its members to create and share knowledge. How to improve community members’ provision of social support becomes a key issue for community managers. To address this issue, utilizing social exchange theory, we propose a benefit-cost model to study the incentive factors and inhibiting factors of the social support in OHCs. In the model, the benefits are extended to the psychological rewards in social exchange, including sense of belongings, reputation and sense of self-worth. Costs are divided into cognitive costs and executional costs. We study the moderation effect of psychological distance. Data will be collected from more than 300 users of well-known OHCs in China and analyzed by SmartPLS. The research findings can provide managerial implications for community managers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xidian University, Xi’an, 710126, China

    Tongyao Zhao & Rong Du

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  1. Tongyao Zhao
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  2. Rong Du
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Correspondence to Tongyao Zhao .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  2. Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Qing Fang

  3. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Daniel Zeng

  4. Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Jiang Wu

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Zhao, T., Du, R. (2018). Why People Are Willing to Provide Social Support in Online Health Communities: Evidence from Social Exchange Perspective. In: Chen, H., Fang, Q., Zeng, D., Wu, J. (eds) Smart Health. ICSH 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10983. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03649-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03649-2_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03648-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03649-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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