Perceived Community Support, Users’ Interactions, and Value Co-Creation in Online Health Community: The Moderating Effect of Social Exclusion

Online health communities (OHCs) face the same problem as other social media platforms in terms of decreasing activity and user attrition. Drawing upon organizational support theory, this study explores how perceived community support affects user interactions and value co-creation which in turn influence their continuous participation. OHCs act as both health knowledge-sharing platforms and important social media for patients, and thus, interpersonal interactions in OHCs are categorized into health-related and general topic interactions. Considering the identity of patients, this study also examines the moderating effect of user-perceived social exclusion on the relationship between community support and user interaction. A total of 292 valid samples from a diabetic patient community in China were used to examine the proposed hypotheses through structural equation modeling. The results show that: (1) Community support has a positive effect on health topic and general topic interactions; (2) both types of interactions have significant positive effects on users’ perceived functional and social values, while general topic interaction is also related positively to users’ perceived affective value; (3) perceived functional value can result directly in continuous participation, while perceived social value contributes indirectly to continuous participation intention through perceived affective value; and (4) users perceived higher social exclusion are more influenced by community support to participate in health topic interactions than those who perceived lower social exclusion, while no significant difference in general topic interactions between two groups. The results of this study can provide implications for both researchers and practitioners.