ArticleHealth expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy2020
Seeking or contributing? Evidence of knowledge sharing behaviours in promoting patients' perceived value of online health communities.
Article in Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Digital pathways to healthcare: a systematic review for unveiling the trends and insights in online health information-seeking behavior.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- The moderating role of knowledge sharing behavior between innovative behavior and nursing competency: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Clusters of Patient Empowerment and Mental Health Literacy Differentiate Professional Help-Seeking Attitudes in Online Mental Health Communities Users.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2025Article
- Seeking or contributing? Evidence of knowledge sharing behaviours in promoting patients' perceived value of online health communities.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHealth knowledge, as an important resource of online health communities (OHCs), attracts users to engage in OHCs and improve the traffics within OHCs, thereby promoting the development of OHCs. Seeking and contributing health knowledge are basic activities in OHCs and are helpful for users to solve their health-related problems, improve their health conditions and thus influence their evaluation of OHCs (ie perceived value of OHCs). However, how do patients' health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing behaviours together with other factors influence their perceived value of OHCs? We still have little knowledge.
objectiveIn order to address the above gap, we root the current study in social cognitive theory and prior related literature on health knowledge sharing in OHCs and patients' perceived value. We treat health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing behaviours as behavioural factors and structural social capital as an environmental factor and explore their impacts on patients' perceived value of OHCs.
designWe have built a theoretical model composed of five hypotheses. We have designed a questionnaire composed of four key constructs and then collected data via an online survey. SETTING AND
participantsWe have distributed the questionnaire in two Chinese OHCs. We obtained a sample of 352 valid responses that were completed by patients having a variety of conditions.
resultsThe empirical results indicate that health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing have positive impacts on patients' perceived value of OHCs. The impact of health knowledge seeking on patients' perceived value of OHCs is greater than the impact of health knowledge contributing. In addition, structural social capital moderates the effects of health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing on patients' perceived value of OHCs. It weakens the effect of health knowledge seeking but enhances the effect of health knowledge contributing on patients' perceived value of OHCs.
conclusionsThese findings contribute to the literature on patients' perceived value of OHCs and on the role of structural social capital in OHCs. For OHC managers, they should provide their users more opportunities to seek or contribute health knowledge in their communities.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.