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Exploring the Factors Influencing Consumers to Voluntarily Reward Free Health Service Contributors in Online Health Communities: Empirical Study.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Rewarding health knowledge and health service contributors with money is one possible approach for the sustainable provision of health knowledge and health services in online health communities (OHCs); however, the reasons why consumers voluntarily reward free health knowledge and health service contributors are still underinvestigated. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to address the abovementioned gap by exploring the factors influencing consumers' voluntary rewarding behaviors (VRBs) toward contributors of free health services in OHCs. METHODS:On the basis of prior studies and the cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST), we incorporated two health service content-related variables (ie, informational support and emotional support) and two interpersonal factors (ie, social norm compliance and social interaction) and built a proposed model. We crawled a dataset from a Chinese OHC for mental health, coded it, extracted nine variables, and tested the model with a negative binomial model. RESULTS:The data sample included 2148 health-related questions and 12,133 answers. The empirical results indicated that the effects of informational support (?=.168; P<.001), emotional support (?=.463; P<.001), social norm compliance (?=.510; P<.001), and social interaction (?=.281; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effects of social interaction on informational support (?=.032; P=.02) and emotional support (?=-.086; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effect of social interaction on social norm compliance (?=.014; P=.38) was insignificant. CONCLUSIONS:Informational support, emotional support, social norm compliance, and social interaction positively influence consumers to voluntarily reward free online health service contributors. Social interaction enhances the effect of informational support but weakens the effect of emotional support. This study contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing in OHCs by exploring the factors influencing consumers' VRBs toward free online health service contributors and contributes to the CEST literature by verifying that the effects of experiential and rational systems on individual behaviors can vary while external factors change.

SUBMITTER: Zhou J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7189252 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Exploring the Factors Influencing Consumers to Voluntarily Reward Free Health Service Contributors in Online Health Communities: Empirical Study.

Zhou Junjie J Liu Fang F Zhou Tingting T

Journal of medical Internet research 20200414 4

<h4>Background</h4>Rewarding health knowledge and health service contributors with money is one possible approach for the sustainable provision of health knowledge and health services in online health communities (OHCs); however, the reasons why consumers voluntarily reward free health knowledge and health service contributors are still underinvestigated.<h4>Objective</h4>This study aimed to address the abovementioned gap by exploring the factors influencing consumers' voluntary rewarding behavi ...[more]

PMID: 32286231

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Project description:BACKGROUND:An online health community (OHC) is a novel sharing channel through which doctors share professional health care knowledge with patients. While doctors have the authority to protect their patients' privacy in OHCs, we have limited information on how doctors' privacy protection choices affect their professional health care knowledge sharing with patients. OBJECTIVE:We examined the relationship between privacy protection and professional health care knowledge sharing in OHCs. Specifically, we examined the effects of privacy protection settings in an OHC on doctors' interactive professional health care knowledge sharing and searching professional health care knowledge sharing (two dimensions of professional health care knowledge sharing). Moreover, we explored how such effects differ across different levels of disease stigma. METHODS:We collected the monthly panel data of 19,456 doctors from Good Doctor, one of the largest OHCs in China, from January 2008 to April 2016. A natural experimental empirical study with difference-in-difference analysis was conducted to test our hypotheses. The time fixed effect and the individual fixed effect were both considered to better identify the effects of a privacy protection setting on professional health care knowledge sharing. Additionally, a cross-sectional analysis was performed for a robust check. RESULTS:The results indicate that the privacy protection setting has a significant positive effect on interactive professional health care knowledge sharing (?=.123, P<.001). However, the privacy protection setting has a significant negative effect on searching professional health care knowledge sharing (?=-.225, P=.05). Moreover, we found that high disease stigma positively impacts the effect of privacy protection on interactive professional health care knowledge sharing (coefficients are in the same valence) and negatively impacts the effects of privacy protection on searching professional health care knowledge sharing (coefficients are in the reverse valence). CONCLUSIONS:Privacy protection has a bilateral effect on professional health care knowledge sharing (ie, a positive effect on interactive professional health care knowledge sharing and a negative effect on searching professional health care knowledge sharing). Such bilateral switches of professional health care knowledge sharing call for a balanced state in conjunction with practical implications. This research also identifies a moderate effect of disease stigma on privacy protection settings and professional health care knowledge sharing.

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Project description:BackgroundThere has been little examination of consumer attitudes towards the commercial advertising of healthcare services in Australia and how marketing is used by consumers in their health decision-making. In this research, we examined how consumers reported commercial advertising helped them to understand the health services available to them and the influence that marketing had upon their choices.MethodsA survey instrument using a Likert scale to indicate agreement or disagreement with 21 questions was developed using qualitative interviews before being distributed online within Australia. Sampling of participants was stratified by age, gender and location. The results were subjected to statistical analysis with Spearman Rank Correlation test being used for bivariate analysis.ResultsOne thousand five hundred sixty-four complete surveys were collected. The results revealed certain consumer beliefs, for example; the title of 'Dr' was believed to indicate skill and high levels of training (81.0%), with 80.3% agreeing incorrectly that use of the title was strictly regulated. Participants reported to have a higher confidence in their own abilities (71.2%) than the public (52.8%) in assessing health advertising. The level of self-confidence increased with higher education level and decreased by age (p <?0.05). Testimonials were reported to be lacking in reliability (67.7%) and that they should not be used in healthcare in the same manner as they are used in other industries. Only 44.8% of participants reported that they felt confident to spot a review that was not written by a genuine user of a service.ConclusionsThe data demonstrated that many health consumers felt that while commercial health advertising was helpful, it was also confusing, with many participants also holding mistaken beliefs around other elements of commercial health advertising. While the advertising of healthcare services might have educational effects and be superficially empowering, advertising is primarily intended to sell, not educate. This research demonstrates that there is significant potential for healthcare advertising to mislead. Future developments in regulatory health advertising policy, and the related ethical frameworks developed by professional healthcare associations, need to consider how the consumers of healthcare services might be better protected from misleading and predatory advertising practices.

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Dataset Information

Exploring the Factors Influencing Consumers to Voluntarily Reward Free Health Service Contributors in Online Health Communities: Empirical Study.

Publications

Exploring the Factors Influencing Consumers to Voluntarily Reward Free Health Service Contributors in Online Health Communities: Empirical Study.

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