How does Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction Affect Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Online Health Communities: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Online health communities (OHCs), a special type of virtual community, have emerged with the rapid growth of the Internet in which people can interact with others and receive other members’ treatment experiences. However, sustainable development of the OHCs require continuous knowledge contributions from members, thus it is vital to explore the factors that impact knowledge sharing behavior from different angles. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were used to test the hypotheses. We distributed the questionnaire via an online platform. There are 340 valid responses were collected and the questionnaire validity rate was 89.0% (340/382). The results indicated that basic psychological need satisfaction has a positive effect on trust and sense of self-worth; trust has a positive effect on knowledge sharing behavior; sense of self-worth has a positive effect on knowledge sharing behavior. Furthermore, the research examined how to improve knowledge sharing behavior based on the findings of the empirical study.