Influence of social support on individual health knowledge adoption in online diabetes communities: the mediating role between cognition and emotion
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-10-2021-0287 |
| Published date | 17 March 2022 |
| Date | 17 March 2022 |
| Pages | 1048-1069 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Haibao Zhao,Jianya Wang,Huiqing Zhang |
Influence of social support
on individual health knowledge
adoption in online diabetes
communities: the mediating role
between cognition and emotion
Haibao Zhao
School of Management Science and Engineering,
Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, Tianjin, China and
Stated-Owned Assets Management Bureau, Tianjin Vocational Institute,
Tianjin, China
Jianya Wang
Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, Tianjin, China, and
Huiqing Zhang
Xizang Minzu University, Xianyang, China
Abstract
Purpose –To address the problem of how to guide and promote health knowledge adoption, based on online
diabetes communities, this study explores the impact mechanism of social support on users’individual health
knowledge adoption to provide insights for online diabetes community management and personal health
management.
Design/methodology/approach –Integrating the theories of cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)
and social support, this study constructs a theoretical model, collects data through a questionnaire and uses a
structural equation model to analyse 356 data.
Findings –The results show that: (1) Considering the online diabetes communities, it is reasonable to divide
social support into emotional, information, network and respect support. (2) Social support affects individual
health knowledge adoption through the intermediaries of knowledge argument quality, knowledge source
credibility and positive emotions. (3) The order of the mediating effect of cognitive and emotional factors
between social support and health knowledge adoption is knowledge argument quality > knowledge source
credibility > positive emotions and rationality > sensibility. (4) Users pay more attention to the source
credibility of professional health knowledge than that of experiential health knowledge.
Originality/value –This research expands the application scope of CAPS and opens the “black box”of the
impact of social support on individual health knowledge adoption behaviour. Simultaneously, the dimensions
of social support and the mediating effect between social support and the two types of health knowledge are
discussed.
Keywords Online diabetes communities, Social support, Knowledge argument quality, Knowledge source
credibility, Positive emotions, Knowledge adoption
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The prevalence of diabetes worldwide has been increasing annually, with 114 million
recorded in China in 2020. According to the International Diabetes Federation, if China does
not take immediate action, the number of Chinese diabetics will reach 150 million by 2040,
AJIM
74,6
1048
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 5 October 2021
Revised 29 December 2021
12 February 2022
Accepted 26 February 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 6, 2022
pp. 1048-1069
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-10-2021-0287
seriously impacting the economy and society. As a response measure with less investment
and great benefits, health education has been internationally recognised as one of the most
effective interventions in diabetes management. It can enable patients to understand the
knowledge and precautions of diseases to promote scientific disease management. Therefore,
adopting health knowledge is key to the success or failure of health education and disease
management. However, how to guide and promote health knowledge adoption is a practical
problem to be solved. Health knowledge adoption is the behaviour of knowledge recipients in
selecting, recognising, or accepting health knowledge. It facilitates knowledge transfer and is
an integral part of knowledge internalisation (Becheikh et al., 2010). The online patient
community is an important channel for users to obtain health knowledge and services (Pan
and Liu, 2021), providing a practical path to guide and promote health knowledge adoption
(Lin et al., 2009). It helps realise the “Healthy China”strategy.
The online diabetes community is an online patient community –a virtual community
comprising only diabetic patients and their families. It mainly focuses on diabetes aetiology,
symptoms, glucose control, diet, exercise and complications (Jin and Xu, 2015). The diabetes
community not only provides users with health knowledge, especially the experiential health
knowledge generated by patients, but also provides social support. In online diabetes
communities, health knowledge mainly includes professional and experiential health
knowledge (Yan et al., 2016;Zhang et al., 2017). Professional health knowledge is generally
mastered by medical professionals, such as causes of disease and treatment plans (Zhang
et al., 2017). Experiential health knowledge is generally mastered by patients, such as
experience of illness, story, etc. (Zhang et al., 2017). Social support refers to emotional,
information or kind help from others (Thoits, 2010). Studies have shown that social support
improves physical and mental health (House et al., 1988). However, from existing studies, it is
unclear how social support affects health knowledge adoption in online diabetes
communities.
Based on online diabetes communities, individual users can search for, share with their
patients, learn from their patients and adopt health knowledge to improve their health
literacy, health decision-making level and quality of life. Similarly, exploring the leading
causes of individual health knowledge adoption behaviour can provide management
inspiration for community managers and operators to improve the community service and
user satisfaction levels. Therefore, the promotion of individual health knowledge or
information adoption behaviour of online diabetes communities is an urgent practical
problem to be solved and of great value and significance.
Regarding how to promote individual health knowledge or information adoption
behaviour of online community users, existing studies are mainly based on the theoretical
perspectives of social capital (Han and Huang, 2017), technology acceptance model (Han and
Zeng, 2021), social cognition (Song, 2010), perceived risk (Mo and Deng, 2014) and social
support (Tang et al., 2018;Jin et al., 2016). However, few scholars have studied individual
health knowledge or information adoption behaviour in online diabetes communities from the
cognitive-affective personality system theory (CAPS) perspective. CAPS unifies cognitive
and affective factors in the personality system, believing that all cognitive and contextual
units constitute motivation between situation and behaviour, and the external situation
affects individual behaviour through the dual path of individual cognition and emotion
(Mischel and Shoda, 1995). Furthermore, CAPS unifies situational, cognitive, emotional and
behavioural factors in the same framework and has unification and stronger explanatory
power which can compensate for the lack of a relatively single previous research perspective
and not in-depth research.
Therefore, this study will take CAPS as the theoretical framework to build a theoretical
model. The model takes social support (situational factors) as the independent variable,
knowledge argument quality (cognitive factors), knowledge source credibility (cognitive
Influence of
social support
on users
1049
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