Research On The Effects Of Social Network And Incentive Mechanism On Online Health Knowledge Sharing

With the vigorous development of information and communication technology(ICT)and the “Internet +” business practices in China,online health communities(OHCs),a new type of medical and healthy online platform,have received a surging number of attentions from the public.Online health communities enable patients and doctors to exchange their health information,involve in social interaction and online collaboration.Among all the activity,users’ health knowledge sharing is a basic one.Prior studies had widely examined the motivation on knowledge sharing in online health communities,while there are still two research gaps available.First,previous research on user knowledge sharing behavior is relatively parallel in the two aspects of “individual attributes” and “social network structure”.Thus,it is rather difficult to clarify the impact of individual factors and the social network structure on the users’ health knowledge sharing behavior in online health communities;Second,in the emerging monetizing knowledge background,online health communities’ managers often stimulate users’ health knowledge sharing behaviors by introducing monetary incentive policies such as monetizing knowledge services,but current studies on the contribution of monetizing knowledge in transactional communities to users conclusions are still unconclusive,and relevant findings are difficult to apply to the special situation of online health communities.In response to the above-mentioned research gaps,this research designs two studies: First,study 1 focuses on the typical non-monetary incentive mechanism of online reputation system,using online reputation as a key internalized motivation variable,combined with the users’ social network structure to explore how individual attributes and social network affect users’ health knowledge sharing.Based on objective data with a time span of 2 months in an online health community,social network calculations,and negative binomial regression analysis,the empirical results show that users’ online reputation and degree centrality positively affect their health knowledge sharing behavior;User’s degree centrality negatively motivates the relationship between online reputation and its health knowledge sharing behavior;while user’s closeness centrality positively motivates the relationship between online reputation and its health knowledge sharing behavior.The second study explores the impact of the introduction of the monetary incentive policy of monetizing knowledge on the health knowledge sharing behavior of users in the OHCs.Using the method of quasi-natural experimental and objective data with a time span of 9months in the same online health community,we analyzed the impact of the implementation of the monetizing knowledge policy on the behavior of online health community users’ knowledge sharing,the quality of knowledge from users,and the knowledge sharing behavior among different user sub-groups.The empirical results show that the implementation of the monetizing knowledge policy has promoted the number of knowledge sharing among users in the online health community,which is shown in a significant increase in the total number of replies.At the same time,the monetizing knowledge policy has stimulated knowledge competition among users and improved the quality of knowledge in the community,which is reflected in the significant increase in the length of replies per capita and the number of replies and likes per capita.Although the knowledge payment policy can promote the quality of knowledge contributed by all sub-group of users,the effect of the policy has group differences,which is manifested in stimulating more ordinary users to participate in replies,but it will inhibit the participation of professionals and other knowledge leaders.The conclusions of this study affirm the effect of online reputation and material incentives on the online health community users’ health knowledge sharing behavior,and additionally discover the characteristics of group behavior differences caused by the introduction of monetizing knowledge in the online health community,which enriches the behavior and knowledge of users in the online health community.The findings in this study also have some enlightenment for the user incentives and platform governance of online health communities.