How users adopt healthcare information: An empirical study of an online Q&A community

• A model was proposed to study patients’ healthcare information adoption behavior.
• Emotional support is positively associated with patients’ adoption decision.
• Competition positively moderates source credibility and adoption decision.
• Involvement positively moderates information quality, source credibility and adoption decision.

ObjectivesThe emergence of social media technology has led to the creation of many online healthcare communities, where patients can easily share and look for healthcare-related information from peers who have experienced a similar problem. However, with increased user-generated content, there is a need to constantly analyse which content should be trusted as one sifts through enormous amounts of healthcare information. This study aims to explore patients’ healthcare information seeking behavior in online communities.MethodsBased on dual-process theory and the knowledge adoption model, we proposed a healthcare information adoption model for online communities. This model highlights that information quality, emotional support, and source credibility are antecedent variables of adoption likelihood of healthcare information, and competition among repliers and involvement of recipients moderate the relationship between the antecedent variables and adoption likelihood. Empirical data were collected from the healthcare module of China’s biggest Q&A community—Baidu Knows. Text mining techniques were adopted to calculate the information quality and emotional support contained in each reply text. A binary logistics regression model and hierarchical regression approach were employed to test the proposed conceptual model.ResultsInformation quality, emotional support, and source credibility have significant and positive impact on healthcare information adoption likelihood, and among these factors, information quality has the biggest impact on a patient’s adoption decision. In addition, competition among repliers and involvement of recipients were tested as moderating effects between these antecedent factors and the adoption likelihood. Results indicate competition among repliers positively moderates the relationship between source credibility and adoption likelihood, and recipients’ involvement positively moderates the relationship between information quality, source credibility, and adoption decision.ConclusionsIn addition to information quality and source credibility, emotional support has significant positive impact on individuals’ healthcare information adoption decisions. Moreover, the relationships between information quality, source credibility, emotional support, and adoption decision are moderated by competition among repliers and involvement of recipients.