Impact of value co-creation on male cancer patients’ well-being in the non-medical cancer support setting

This study is among the first to investigate the dynamic value co-creation process in non-medical cancer support setting, it specifically examines the often-overlooked male cancer patients. The study explores the continuing value co-creation process and value outcomes, through patient's reflections and personal explanations of their lived experiences. Participants were accessed mainly from Maggie’s Centres, a well-known cancer support charity in the UK. This research takes a mixed methods approach involving a systematic literature review, non-participant observation, interviews, a survey and a focus group. Thematic analysis was applied to study qualitative data, whereas multiple linear regression and multivariate regression were conducted to analyse quantitative data. The findings show that different value co-creation motivations and behaviours enhance different dimensions of male patients’ well-being, in the non-medical setting. Particularly, this is the first study to identify that enjoyment, as a motivational factor for value co-creation, and responsible behaviour, as a behavioural factor, have a direct positive effect on all four dimensions of patients’ well-being (psychological, social, existential and physical). Interestingly, this research reveals that when informants co-create value driven by their negative emotions, they experience a positive effect on their psychological well-being. Also, this study is the first to find that informants’ motivations to co-create value with others can change over time, previous literature, in social support service settings in general, did not identify this possible change. In addition, this study discovers four emerging resources that informants co-create and perceive to be valuable for themselves. They are the ability to share personal feelings, opportunity to share those feelings, hope for longer and better life and knowledge to manage the illness. This study is the first to demonstrate that the co-created ability to share personal feelings by patients in the charity setting improves their communication skills, enabling them to talk about their illness and share their feelings in their everyday life. This research has four main theoretical contributions: it clearly shows the dynamic value co-creation process through consumers’ active engagement and interaction with other actors while using complex and prolonged services; it also extends our understanding of how context; it identifies four emerging resources that are co-created by and for male patients in the social support setting, which is rarely explored in the literature. It also reveals the impact of the value co-creation motivations, behaviours and emerging resources on various dimensions of consumers’ well-being and reveals how and why these dimensions are enhanced. The practical implications of this research allow charities and support organisations to understand how and why patients and other actors co-create value for patients in the social support setting and the impact of the value co-creation on patients’ well-being