Users’ health information sharing intention in strong ties social media: context of emerging markets

This paper aims to theorize and examine how central cognition elaboration cue and peripheral cognition elaboration cue influence users’ health information sharing intention in Strong ties social media (STSM) in emerging markets.

This paper innovatively proposes two concepts of health information emotion and health information sharing value based on the in-depth observation of users’ social health behavior. We integrate Elaboration Likelihood Model, Media Richness Theory, Trust Theory and Regulatory Focus Theory to develop hypotheses and research models and lay emphasis on the study of health information emotion’s moderating effect. This paper conducts an empirical study by selecting 372 health information users of WeChat, a typical STSM, to verify the research model by structural equation model.

For the central route, individual motivation and health information richness positively influence health information sharing value. For peripheral route, health information source trust and health information recipient trust both positively influence the health information sharing attitude. Health information sharing value and sharing attitude can positively affect users’ health information sharing intention. In addition, health information positive emotion has significant moderating effect, while health information negative emotion does not have.

This study contributes to a comprehensive perspective for understanding users’ health information sharing intention in STSM in emerging markets, an important but understudied topic. The results can also give implications for researchers to explore users’ behavioral intention from the perspective of process-oriented persuasion and health information emotion’s moderating effect.