Measuring knowledge contribution performance of physicians in online health communities: A BP neural network approach

Extant literature on measuring the performance of physicians’ knowledge contribution in an online health community (OHC) is limited. To address this gap, this article aims to (1) develop a measurement model for physicians’ knowledge contribution performance; (2) use BP neural network to assign reasonable weight to each indicator of the model; and (3) explore the status and differences of knowledge contribution performance among a group of physicians. Based on the sample of 5407 infectious disease physicians in a Chinese OHC, we propose the measurement model by integrating physicians’ active knowledge contribution (AKC) and responsive knowledge contribution (RKC), covering 11 dimensions of contribution quantity and quality. We employ the BP neural network to optimise the model weights using the initial weight of the model obtained by the entropy method. The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is used to evaluate the performance of physicians’ knowledge contribution in the OHC. The results show that it is feasible to use BP neural network to assign model weights. The distribution of physicians’ knowledge contribution performance is uneven; only a few have a high-level knowledge contribution performance. Meanwhile, a significant positive correlation exists between a physician’s title and respective knowledge contribution performance. Our research may contribute to related literature and practices by offering a fine-grained understanding of the performance of physicians’ knowledge contribution.