The Impact of Health Information Privacy Concerns on Engagement and Payment Behaviors in Online Health Communities

Online health communities (OHCs) have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, several concerns have been raised regarding the privacy of users' personal information in OHCs. Considering that OHCs are a type of data-sharing or d...

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Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 13; p. 861903
Main Authors Wu, Banggang, Luo, Peng, Li, Mengqiao, Hu, Xiao
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 08.04.2022
Subjects
health information
online behavior
online health communities
payment behavior
privacy concerns
Psychology
online behavior
privacy concerns
health information
payment behavior
online health communities
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Summary:Online health communities (OHCs) have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, several concerns have been raised regarding the privacy of users' personal information in OHCs. Considering that OHCs are a type of data-sharing or data-driven platform, it is crucial to determine whether users' health information privacy concerns influence their behaviors in OHCs. Thus, by conducting a survey, this study explores the impact of users' health information privacy concerns on their engagement and payment behavior (Paid) in OHCs. The empirical results show that users' concerns about health information privacy reduce their Paid in OHCs by negatively influencing their OHC engagement. Further analysis reveals that if users have higher benefit appraisals (i.e., perceived informational and emotional support from OHCs) and lower threat appraisals (i.e., perceived severity and vulnerability of information disclosure from OHCs), the negative effect of health information privacy concerns on users' OHC engagement will decrease.
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Edited by: Libo Liu, The University of Melbourne, Australia
This article was submitted to Health Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Reviewed by: Kristijan Mirkovski, Deakin University, Australia; Chunxiao Yin, Southwest University, China
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.861903