WeChatting for Health: An Examination of the Relationship between Motivations and Active Engagement

As one of the largest mobile social media in the world, WeChat holds great potential for promoting health. Users not only seek and exchange health information on WeChat but also fulfill their health-related needs afforded by the platform. Using the two-step procedure common in uses and gratifications research, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 WeChat users to explore their motivations for health-related uses on the platform, which were further rated by 522 WeChat users in China through a national wide online survey. Exploratory factor analysis identified five motivations: information seeking, building self-agency, social interaction, technological convenience, and self-expression. A series of hierarchical regression analyses reveals that social interaction is the best predictor of healthcare information engagement on WeChat, followed by building self-agency, information needs, and self-expression. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the psychological antecedents of using mobile social media for health-related purposes and the subsequent active behavior responses.