IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v63y2012i3p543-557.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments

Author

Listed:
  • Sanghee Oh

Abstract

In Web 2.0 environments, people commonly share their knowledge and personal experiences with others, but little is known about their background characteristics and motivations. Thus, the current study examines some of the characteristics and motivations common among answerers, who produce health‐related answers to questions asked by anonymous others in a social Q&A site, Yahoo! Answers. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to top and recent answerers to investigate their demographics, areas of health expertise, and other characteristics related to answering behaviors online. Also, 10 motivation factors are proposed and tested in the survey: enjoyment, efficacy, learning, personal gain, altruism, community interest, social engagement, empathy, reputation, and reciprocity. Findings show that altruism is the most influential motivation, while personal gain is the least. Enjoyment and efficacy are more influential than other social motivations, such as reputation or reciprocity, although there are some variations across different groups of answerers. Motivational factors among top answerers or health experts are further analyzed. The findings of this study have practical implications for promoting health answerers to share knowledge and experiences in social contexts. Furthermore, the study design of the current study can be used to examine motivations of answerers in other topic areas as well as other social contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanghee Oh, 2012. "The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(3), pages 543-557, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:3:p:543-557
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21676
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21676
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21676?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kordzadeh, Nima & Warren, John & Seifi, Ali, 2016. "Antecedents of privacy calculus components in virtual health communities," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 724-734.
    2. Ni Huang & Zhijun Yan & Haonan Yin, 2021. "Effects of Online–Offline Service Integration on e‐Healthcare Providers: A Quasi‐Natural Experiment," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(8), pages 2359-2378, August.
    3. Jiabei Xia & Tailai Wu & Liqin Zhou, 2021. "Sharing of Verified Information about COVID-19 on Social Network Sites: A Social Exchange Theory Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-12, January.
    4. Zhizhen Yao & Zhenni Ni & Bin Zhang & Jian Du, 2022. "Do Informational and Emotional Elements Differ between Online Psychological and Physiological Disease Communities in China? A Comparative Study of Depression and Diabetes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-21, February.
    5. Adam Worrall & Alicia Cappello & Rachel Osolen, 2021. "The importance of socio‐emotional considerations in online communities, social informatics, and information science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(10), pages 1247-1260, October.
    6. Tseng, Hsiao-Ting & Ibrahim, Fahad & Hajli, Nick & Nisar, Tahir M. & Shabbir, Haseeb, 2022. "Effect of privacy concerns and engagement on social support behaviour in online health community platforms," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    7. Weiwei Yan & Xin Wen & Yin Zhang & Sonali Kudva & Qian Liu, 2023. "The dynamics of Q&A in academic social networking sites: insights from participants, interaction network, response time, and discipline differences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1895-1922, March.
    8. Arun Kumar & Mrinalini Pandey, 2023. "Social Media and Impact of Altruistic Motivation, Egoistic Motivation, Subjective Norms, and EWOM toward Green Consumption Behavior: An Empirical Investigation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-16, February.
    9. Qian Wu & Chei Sian Lee & Dion Hoe‐Lian Goh, 2023. "Understanding user‐generated questions in social Q&A: A goal‐framing approach," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(8), pages 990-1009, August.
    10. Regina Lenart-Gansiniec, 2017. "Virtual Knowledge Sharing in Crowdsourcing: Measurement Dilemmas," Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione", vol. 13(3), pages 95-123.
    11. Erik Choi & Chirag Shah, 2016. "User motivations for asking questions in online Q&A services," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1182-1197, May.
    12. Yeganeh Charband & Nima Jafari Navimipour, 2016. "Online knowledge sharing mechanisms: a systematic review of the state of the art literature and recommendations for future research," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1131-1151, December.
    13. Junghwa Bahng & Chang Heon Lee, 2020. "Topic Modeling for Analyzing Patients’ Perceptions and Concerns of Hearing Loss on Social Q&A Sites: Incorporating Patients’ Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(17), pages 1-14, August.
    14. Wenlong Liu & Xiucheng Fan & Rongrong Ji & Yi Jiang, 2019. "Perceived Community Support, Users’ Interactions, and Value Co-Creation in Online Health Community: The Moderating Effect of Social Exclusion," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-22, December.
    15. Luo, Chuan & Lan, Yao & (Robert) Luo, Xin & Li, Han, 2021. "The effect of commitment on knowledge sharing: An empirical study of virtual communities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    16. Jiaqi Liu & Zhenping Zhang & Jiayin Qi & Hong Wu & Manyi Chen, 2019. "Understanding the Impact of Opinion Leaders’ Characteristics on Online Group Knowledge-Sharing Engagement from In-Group and Out-Group Perspectives: Evidence from a Chinese Online Knowledge-Sharing Com," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-28, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:3:p:543-557. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.