ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1619464
Study on the influencing factors and composing path of online healthcare community use: An empirical study based on fsQCA
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Management University, Ji nan, China
- 2shandong university of finance and economics, Ji nan, China
- 3Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In recent years, online healthcare communities have been widely adopted in China. However, the influencing factors and configuration paths affecting their usage remain unclear. This study employs Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to empirically investigate the determinants and combinatorial pathways leading to the use of online healthcare communities. Based on a cross-sectional survey design, data were collected via an online questionnaire using a snowball sampling method, resulting in 287 valid responses from users with experience in online healthcare platforms. The study examines condition configurations from the perspectives of patients, doctors, and platforms, identifying six sufficient combinatorial paths that lead to usage. Among these, the combination of perceived usefulness × perceived ease of use × platform trust exhibits the highest raw coverage. The findings enhance understanding of the mechanisms driving online healthcare community adoption and offer practical insights for platform optimization, policy-making, and future research.
Keywords: Online healthcare community use, composing configuration, fsQCA, Perceived usefulness, Platform Trust
Received: 21 May 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 wang, Han, Ma and Hao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Feifei Hao, aifeifei0210@126.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.