Understand the Impact of Technology Feature in Online Health Communities: Why the Representation of Information Matters

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and their negative socio-economic impact, online health communities (OHCs) where patients can seek informational and emotional support play an essential role in mitigating the impact. However, chronically ill patients encounter a big issue when using OHCs for self-management and health promotion—poor information quality. Grounded on the information quality framework and information-motivation-behavioral skills model, this article investigates how technology feature, specifically the information representation feature, impacts OHC users' health knowledge acquisition and self-efficacy. The findings show that structured health information can positively impact health knowledge acquisition via OHC users' perceptions of information completeness and ease of understanding. A positive impact of health knowledge acquisition on self-efficacy is also found. The findings provide insights into supporting OHCs users through effective utilization of different information representation features.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no potential competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This article is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71573022 and 71974018) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2022JJ007).

Notes on contributors

Xuemei Huang

Xuemei Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Systems in the Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship of Carson College of Business at Washington State University. She has authored/co-authored publications in conferences (e.g., Americas Conference on Information Systems) and the journal of Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Jing Fan

Jing Fan is a professor in Management Information Systems at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her research focuses on online healthcare, information sharing and social media. She has published paper on Information and Management, Industrial Management & Data Systems, the conference proceedings of AMCIS, HICSS and so on.