An Empirical Study On Online Health Communities User Participation

Under the background of the combination of Internet technology and health care,the diversified and real-time demands of the public for health care services promote the emergence and development of online health communities(OHCs).Online health communities are online platforms that support social interaction.They bring together a large amount of medical and health-related information to provide opportunities for health education,knowledge sharing,expert consultation and member exchanges.Due to its advantages of convenience and efficiency,the online health community has become an important channel for the public to obtain health information,improve health literacy and seek medical consultation.However,users' activities in the community are mainly based on knowledge getting behavior,lack of willingness to donate health knowledge,and low overall user participation,which may lead to the failure of online healthy community operations.Therefore,this paper takes user participation behavior as the research object,and explores the influencing factors of user knowledge getting behavior and knowledge donation behavior in online healthy communities.Research expects to provide management advice for the sustainable and healthy development of online health communities.This paper firstly summarizes the background and significance of the topic by combing the relevant literature,and then proposes the method and content of this paper.Secondly,on the basis of reviewing the research on online healthy community,user participation behavior,social support,social capital and privacy concerns,the theoretical model that influences the participation behavior of online healthy community users is constructed,and the meaning and measurement methods of variables in the model are defined.Then,combined with the interview and questionnaire survey results,the reliability and validity of the 377 valid questionnaires were tested with SPSS 20.0 software,and the fitting degree and theoretical hypothesis of the research model were tested with LISREL software.Finally,the empirical results are analyzed and discussed,and the shortcomings and prospects of this research are put forward.The research results show that social support,including informational support and emotional support,has a significant impact on social capital.Social support affects user participation behavior by affecting social capital.Social interaction ties,trust and shared language have a significant positive impact on user health knowledge getting behavior.Among them,trust has the strongest effect.Social interaction ties,norm of reciprocity,identification and shared vision have a significant positive impact on user health knowledge donation behavior.Privacy concerns have a significant negative impact on health knowledge donation behavior.But the study did not verify the impact of privacy concerns on health knowledge getting behavior.The research results suggest that online health community operators should pay attention to user informational and emotional needs,strengthen community interpersonal network interaction,establish a community environment with high level of trust,reduce user privacy concerns,thereby enhancing user participation behavior and promoting the sustainable and healthy development of platforms.