Motivations for Health Information Sharing Among Older Social Media Users​

Health information sharing involves the voluntary and purposive dissemination of health information (Liu et al., 2019). It can enhance sharers’ health literacy (Chen et al., 2019), efficacy (Lin & Ho, 2018), social relationships (Lin & Ho, 2018), and health practices (Crook et al., 2016; Vaala et al., 2018), though it may also facilitate the spread of misinformation (Le et al., 2023). Older adults have increasingly consumed health information on social media platforms (LeRouge et al., 2014). However, despite a growing number of studies examining their online health information-seeking behaviors (Lee & Kim, 2015; Reifegerste et al., 2020), research on their role as knowledge sharers remains insufficient. This study aims to explore older adults’ health information sharing on social media, along with their motivations, to advance the understanding of their digital information behaviors.

The research context involves older adults sharing health information on WeChat, the largest social media platform in China (Tencent, 2021). According to self-determination theory, human behavior is driven by intrinsic motivations (e.g., inherent interests) or extrinsic motivations (e.g., external rewards or coercion). These motivations may be hindered or facilitated by additional contextual factors such as autonomy, connectedness, and support for competence (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2020). Guided by this theoretical framework and existing research on health information sharing among patients and medical professionals (Le et al., 2023), this study examines how sharing beliefs and relational outcome expectancy, reflecting intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, respectively, are associated with health information sharing among older WeChat users. Additionally, this study explores four contextual factors—homophily, information usefulness, social support, and social media literacy—in shaping older adults’ sharing motivations. It is assumed that older adults’ perceived similarity with WeChat friends (homophily), perceived usefulness of health information on WeChat (information usefulness), perceived availability of support on WeChat (social support), and perceived competence of using WeChat for health information (social media literacy) may influence their beliefs regarding the value of sharing health information (sharing beliefs) and their expectations of positive relational outcomes (relational outcome expectancy). These, in turn, are expected to motivate their health information sharing (see Figure 1).

A survey with 407 older adults aged 60 or above (M = 68.54, SD = 6.21) actively using WeChat was conducted in Shandong Province, China. Results showed that participants with higher social media literacy (,8 = 0.45, p < 0.01), social support (fl = 0.21, p < 0.05), and homophily (,8 = 0.19, p < 0.01) had stronger sharing beliefs. Those who perceived greater information usefulness (fl = 0.79, p <0.001) and social support (fl = 0.15, p < 0.05) expected better relational outcomes. Both sharing beliefs (fl = 0.37, p < 0.001) and relational outcome expectancy (fl = 0.35, p < 0.001) were positively associated with sharing activities (see Figure 2). Our findings indicate the importance of both internal and external rewards in older adults’ health information sharing and the conditions facilitating their sharing motivations in social media environments. The results inform interventions promoting supportive and responsive social media use for healthy aging.