Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS)

The paper presents a study design intended to disentangle the various components of social support andprivacy concerns related to knowledge-sharing in a smoking cessation online health community from aprivacy calculus perspective. In the research model, social support confers benefits of informationalsupport, emotional support, esteem support, and network support, all of which have a positive effect onknowledge-sharing behaviour therein. The privacy concerns, articulated in terms of risks, entail threatappraisals (perceived severity and perceived vulnerability) and coping appraisals (response efficacyand self-efficacy). Threat appraisals negatively affect knowledge-sharing in the smoking cessationOHC, whereas coping appraisals have a positive effect on the sharing. Under privacy calculus theory,the risk–benefit analysis determines individual users’ knowledge-sharing behaviour in a smokingcessation OHC. The individual user’s smoking cessation OHC usage experience and the stage ofsmoking cessation are set as moderators in the proposed research model to explore user differences inknowledge sharing behaviour in the smoking cessation OHC. This study may contribute to acomprehensive understanding of the core antecedents to knowledge-sharing in smoking cessationOHCs.