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| Research on Motivational Evolution Mechanism of Users’ Continuous Participation in Online Health Communities |
| ZHANG Weiwei，JIANG Xue |
| Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China |
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Abstract Users’continuous participation is the key to the success of online health communities.This paper adopts the grounded theory to analyze the interview data from 41 users for exploratory research, and reveals the motivational evolution process of users’ continuous participation in online health communities from a dynamic perspective. The results show that users’participation behaviors are driven by external motivation (perceived quality of communities, perceived support from community members and perceived benefits) in the initial stage of participation.The opportunity effect of the users’ context and the positive emotion generated by the external environment stimulus promote the internalization of the users’external motivation.When the three basic internal demands (perceived health competence, perceived autonomy, and perceived relatedness) in communities are satisfied, users’motivations for continuous participation are generated.In addition, differences in platform types have specific impact on the evolution mechanism of users’ motivation.
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Received: 17 January 2020
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