Patients' adherence to health advice on virtual communities: Identity and bond theory perspective

Abstract

The Internet is becoming increasingly popular and powerful as a healthcare delivery tool. Health community websites in particular have enabled patients to collectively conduct healthcare related activities. Considering the enormous benefits, physicians and organizations can effectively use online community based websites to deliver healthcare and promote health management practices. Using identity and bond theories as main theoretical lenses and synthesizing literature from social-psychology, we study how different features of online health communities can increase its members' acceptance and adherence to health advice they receive online. With the collaboration of a leading healthcare institution, a field experiment will be conducted to test the hypotheses. Our study is one of the first studies in IS to investigate the actual impact of an online health community based intervention. This study provides several theoretical and practical implications in the areas of online communities, health behaviors and attachment literature. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved.