Zhou Junjie, Liu Fang, Zhou Tingting
Shantou University Business School, Shantou, China.
China Life Property & Casualty Insurance Company Limited, Beijing, China.
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Apr 14;22(4):e16526. doi: 10.2196/16526.
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.
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.
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.
The data sample included 2148 health-related questions and 12,133 answers. The empirical results indicated that the effects of informational support (β=.168; P<.001), emotional support (β=.463; P<.001), social norm compliance (β=.510; P<.001), and social interaction (β=.281; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effects of social interaction on informational support (β=.032; P=.02) and emotional support (β=-.086; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effect of social interaction on social norm compliance (β=.014; P=.38) was insignificant.
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.
用金钱奖励健康知识和健康服务提供者是在线健康社区（OHC）中可持续提供健康知识和健康服务的一种可能方法；然而，消费者自愿奖励免费健康知识和健康服务提供者的原因仍未得到充分研究。
本研究旨在通过探索影响消费者对OHC中免费健康服务提供者的自愿奖励行为（VRB）的因素来弥补上述差距。
基于先前的研究和认知-经验自我理论（CEST），我们纳入了两个与健康服务内容相关的变量（即信息支持和情感支持）和两个人际因素（即社会规范遵从和社会互动），并构建了一个提议的模型。我们从一个中国心理健康OHC中爬取了一个数据集，对其进行编码，提取了九个变量，并用负二项模型对该模型进行了测试。
数据样本包括2148个与健康相关的问题和12133个答案。实证结果表明，信息支持（β = 0.168；P <.001）、情感支持（β = 0.463；P <.001）、社会规范遵从（β = 0.510；P <.001）和社会互动（β = 0.281；P <.001）的影响是显著的。社会互动对信息支持（β = 0.032；P = 0.02）和情感支持（β = -0.086；P <.001）的调节作用是显著的。社会互动对社会规范遵从的调节作用（β = 0.014；P = 0.38）不显著。
信息支持、情感支持、社会规范遵从和社会互动对消费者自愿奖励免费在线健康服务提供者有积极影响。社会互动增强了信息支持的效果，但削弱了情感支持的效果。本研究通过探索影响消费者对免费在线健康服务提供者的VRB的因素，为OHC中的知识共享文献做出了贡献，并通过验证经验系统和理性系统对个体行为的影响会随着外部因素的变化而变化，为CEST文献做出了贡献。
