随着网络技术的发展和应用,在线健康社区逐渐进入人们的生活,越来越多的用户开始使用在线健康社区进行健康管理.改善和提升健康状况是用户参与社区的主要动机,更是在线健康社区得以存续和发展的关键.因此,探讨在线健康社区背景下用户健康状况的影响因素成为至关重要的研究课题.尽管已有大量在线健康社区的研究探讨过社会因素(来自于他人的社会支持)对于健康状况的影响,然而这些研究却忽视了个人因素在健康管理中的作用(个人目标和性别差异).基于社会因素和个人因素,整合社会支持、个人目标和性别差异的相关理论,探讨在线健康社区中用户获得的社会支持和个人目标对于健康状况的影响,研究用户的性别差异对于社会支持、个人目标和健康状况之间关系的调节作用.收集真实在线健康社区中1 405个用户的相关信息作为研究数据,建立模型验证研究假设,利用SPSS 22.0软件对数据和实证模型进行分析.实证结果表明,社会支持从情感和信息等方面影响在线健康社区的用户,社会支持的数量积极影响用户健康状况的改善程度;个人目标与用户本身自律的内在需求相关,个人目标积极影响用户的行为和健康状况;性别差异具有调节作用,即社会支持对于女性用户的影响比男性用户更强,个人目标对于男性用户的影响比女性用户更强.探讨个人目标对于在线健康社区用户健康状况改善的影响,研究用户之间的性别差异对于影响因素与健康状况之间关系的调节作用,研究结果为在线健康社区用户和设计者提供了实践指导.%With the development and application of website technology,online health communities come into people's life.More and more users use those communities to manage health condition.The most important goal of the development of online health community is to improve users' health condition.Therefore,how to impact users' health condition has become a vital research question.Although there are a large number of studies that have investigated the effects of social factors (i.e.,social support from other users) in online health communities,those studies ignore the role of individual factors (i.e.,individual goal and gender difference) in health management.Based on social and individual factors,integrated social support theory,goal theory and gender difference theory,this paper builds a research model to reveal the impacts of social support and individual goal on users' health condition.In addition,this paper explores the moderating effects of gender difference on the relationships between factors and health condition.We collect 1 405 users' cross-section data from a real online health community,which is the biggest weight-loss website in China,to establish an empirical regression model,and then use SPSS 22.0 software to analyze research data and run the empirical model.The empirical results of this paper prove the positive effects of social support from other users on health condition as well as the findings of previous research.Social support relates to emotional and informational factors for users of online health communities.The amount of social support from others is positively associated with users' health condition.Moreover,the results of our research model show that users' individual health goal (goal weight) positively affects the improvement of their health condition.As individuals' goal relates to their needs of autonomy,high health goal leads to the improvement of behaviors and health condition.In addition,we also prove the moderating effects of gender difference on the relationship between factors and health condition,i.e.,the effect of social support on health condition is stronger for women than that for men,and the effect of individual goal on health condition is stronger for men than that for women.The contribution of this paper is two-fold.First,we investigate the effects of social support and individual health goal on users' health condition.Second,this paper researches the moderating effects of gender difference on the relationship between social support and individual goal and health condition.These findings can contribute to the literature on online health communities and provide suggestions for users and practitioners of online health communities.
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