Social support, belongingness, and value co-creation behaviors in online health communities

Community members become part of the value chain, and their value co-creation behaviors have progressively elicited extensive attention from scholars and practitioners. However, the mechanisms on how members co-create value in online health communities (OHCs) have been poorly investigated. Therefore, this study develops a model of how belongingness and social support affect the four value co-creation behaviors (i.e., information sharing, responsible, feedback, and advocacy behaviors) in OHCs based on need-to-belong theory and social support literature. Our survey data from 237 OHC members empirically show that informational, emotional, esteem, and companionship supports positively influence members’ belongingness to OHCs, which in turn affects information sharing, responsible, feedback, and advocacy behaviors. Members’ belongingness to OHCs mediates the relationships between the four forms of social support and value co-creation behavior. In addition, OHC members’ perceived health competence positively moderates the influence of belongingness on information-sharing behavior, whereas their mental health negatively moderates the relationships of belongingness with all four value co-creation behaviors. Therefore, promoting value co-creation relies on the improvement of member belongingness, but it should also consider the health competence and status of members.