Influence of social support on individual health knowledge adoption in online diabetes communities: the mediating role between cognition and emotion

Purpose To address the problem of how to guide and promote health knowledge adoption, based on online diabetes communities, this study explores the impact mechanism of social support on users' individual health knowledge adoption to provide insights for online diabetes community management and personal health management. Design/methodology/approach Integrating the theories of cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) and social support, this study constructs a theoretical model, collects data through a questionnaire and uses a structural equation model to analyse 356 data. Findings The results show that: (1) Considering the online diabetes communities, it is reasonable to divide social support into emotional, information, network and respect support. (2) Social support affects individual health knowledge adoption through the intermediaries of knowledge argument quality, knowledge source credibility and positive emotions. (3) The order of the mediating effect of cognitive and emotional factors between social support and health knowledge adoption is knowledge argument quality > knowledge source credibility > positive emotions and rationality > sensibility. (4) Users pay more attention to the source credibility of professional health knowledge than that of experiential health knowledge. Originality/value This research expands the application scope of CAPS and opens the “black box” of the impact of social support on individual health knowledge adoption behaviour. Simultaneously, the dimensions of social support and the mediating effect between social support and the two types of health knowledge are discussed.