Why they Self-Disclose？Examining Factors Influencing People's Personal Information Disclosure in Online Healthcare Communities Research-in-Progress

Online healthcare communities (OHCs) encourage people to disclose their personal information with others to seek support and to accelerate research and help create better treatments. However, disclosing personal information might cause privacy disclosure and some risks. This paper aims to explore what factors and how those factors affect people’s personal information disclosure intention in OHCs. Based on “risk-motivation” perspective, we identify perceived usefulness as extrinsic motivation and social support as intrinsic motivation, and distinguish four kinds of risks to test those motivation and risk factors’ effects on people’s personal information disclose intention in OHCs. As two constructs describing the characteristics of OHCs, expected disease severe extent and common identity are supposed having moderating effects’ on motivation and risk factors’ effects. The theoretical contribution of this paper is offering a model to explain people’s personal information disclose intention in OHCs and integrate constructs to describe the characteristic of OHCs; the practical implications is providing insight on OHC managers’ operation for communities’ viability and people’s privacy protection. Finally, limitations and future works also are presented.