Users’ Willingness to Share Health Information in a Social Question-and-Answer Community: Cross-sectional Survey in China

BACKGROUND: Social question-and-answer communities play an increasingly important role in the dissemination of health information. It is important to identify influencing factors of user willingness to share health information to improve public health literacy. OBJECTIVE: This study explored influencing factors of social question-and-answer community users who share health information to provide reference for the construction of a high-quality health information sharing community. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted through snowball sampling of 185 participants who are Zhihu users in China. A structural equation analysis was used to verify the interaction and influence of the strength between variables in the model. Hierarchical regression was also used to test the mediating effect in the model. RESULTS: Altruism (β=.264, P<.001), intrinsic reward (β=.260, P=.03), self-efficacy (β=.468, P<.001), and community influence (β=.277, P=.003) had a positive effect on users’ willingness to share health information (WSHI). By contrast, extrinsic reward (β=−0.351, P<.001) had a negative effect. Self-efficacy also had a mediating effect (β=.147, 29.15%, 0.147/0.505) between community influence and WSHI. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that users’ WSHI is influenced by many factors including altruism, self-efficacy, community influence, and intrinsic reward. Improving the social atmosphere of the platform is an effective method of encouraging users to share health information.