What Drives Patients Affected by Depression to Share in Online Depression Communities? A Social Capital Perspective

Abstract

Online depression communities give people additional opportunities to share their experiences and exchange social support to care for themselves in fighting against depression. We aimed to explore what drives patients to share in online depression communities. We used three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational, and cognitive) to explain their sharing behaviors. We further proposed that five factors (social interaction ties, a sense of shared identity, trust, expertise, and a sense of shared values) will have significant, positive effects on sharing behaviors and that there are differences among patients who have spent different lengths of time participating in online depression communities. We then chose a popular online depression community in China as our data source and obtained a dataset consisting of 31,440 posts from 197 members. Then, we employed panel data regression analyses to test all six hypotheses. The results revealed that all five factors had significant, positive effects (p < 0.01) on patients’ sharing behaviors, and the effects were significantly different across groups. Our empirical results help designers and managers of online depression communities take specific measures to facilitate community members’ access to social capital resources. Meanwhile, our results have implications for existing health management and e-health literature.

Development of Social Support Networks by Patients With Depression Through Online Health Communities: Social Network Analysis

“…In the meantime, they receive less attention because of the lack of accumulation of social capital, making it difficult for them to get more emotional support. This argument is supported by a recent study by Lu et al [ 43 ], which found that it is difficult for newcomers involved in online depression communities to increase their social capital in a very short period of time and they will take a considerable amount of time contributing to the online community to establish mutual trust with other members.…”

“…On the other hand, we believe that the experienced “old-timers” are more willing to share knowledge with newcomers and provide them with more support for a number of reasons [ 40 - 42 ]. First, some of them hope to develop new social ties with newcomers to enhance their social capital [ 43 ]. Second, community members with a high degree of shared identity and strong levels of trust consider it a duty to assist newcomers in improving depression treatment and outcomes and they hope that the newcomers soon became fully integrated into the online community [ 44 , 45 ].…”

Does Usage of Online Social Media Help Users With Depressed Symptoms Improve Their Mental Health? Empirical Evidence From an Online Depression Community

“…They feel morally obliged to help others within the organization on the basis of shared membership ( 23 ). In online depression communities, users view themselves as members of the community and consider it a duty to assist other users in improving depression treatment and outcomes ( 24 ). When they think they have the ability to help others, they will feel very happy.…”

A Comparative Study of Online Depression Communities in China

“…An MDC for comparative analysis had to be selected. We referred to some literature and surveyed some communities, including the depression community on Baidu Tieba (Baidu, Beijing, China) [ 15 ], DingXiangYuan [ 16 ], Sunshine [ 43 ], and Zhihu. Among them, the DingXiangYuan and Sunshine are online community platforms operated by medical and psychological service institutions and only for patients who have been diagnosed with depression.…”

“…In addition, the motivation and influencing factors of members’ participation in these communities were also explored. [ 15 , 16 ]. On the other hand, some studies examined the differences between member subgroups within communities.…”