Associations Between Support-Seekers' Cross-Community Interactions and Their Engagement with Received Comments in Online Health Communities

2026-07-21

AI Summary

This study investigates how users’ participation in non-health-related online communities influences their engagement with comments in health-focused forums, particularly in terms of positive emotional expression and willingness to improve. Leveraging behavioral data from 26,725 users across 40,479 non-health Baidu Tieba communities and their subsequent interactions with 78,501 posts in 30 health-related Tieba forums, this work systematically uncovers, for the first time, the association between cross-community participation types—such as health, personal issues, and entertainment—and the quality of subsequent interactions within health communities. Large-scale behavioral analysis and statistical modeling reveal that users previously active in health or personal-issue communities are more likely to join target health forums but subsequently exhibit fewer replies and lower willingness to improve, offering novel insights for understanding and enhancing user engagement in online health communities.

Abstract

Support-seeker' active engagement with received comments, e.g., showing positive sentiment and willingness to improve in the replies, can indicate the success of online health communities (OHCs). Their participation in other communities may correlate with their engagement in OHCs but remains under-explored. This paper analyzes 26, 725 seekers' behaviors in the other 40, 479 communities and their associations with seekers' engagement with received comments under their 78, 501 posts in 30 Baidu Tieba OHCs. We found that seekers primarily posted in other communities that are also health-related (25.3%), followed by those about games and entertainment (e.g., Dota, 20.8%). Seekers who posted in other communities about health (26.3%) or personal issues (e.g., saving money, 20.7%) before had relatively higher probabilities of subsequently posting in the 30 OHCs we identified, but this posting experience was associated with fewer replies and less expressed willingness to improve based on received comments. We provide insights into fostering seekers' engagement in OHCs based on cross-community interactions.

Problem

• online health communities
• support-seekers
• cross-community interactions
• engagement
• received comments

Innovation

• cross-community interaction
• online health communities
• user engagement
• behavioral association
• sentiment analysis