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International Conference on Smart Health

ICSH 2019: Smart Health pp 177–188Cite as

Understanding WeChat Users’ Herd Behavior in Forwarding Health Information: An Empirical Study in China

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11924))

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the impacts of social influence factors and herd effect on the herd behavior on forwarding health information of WeChat users. The results of data analysis show that social influence factors have a significant impact on the herd behavior on forwarding health information of WeChat users through two mechanisms, namely, normative social influence and informational social influence. And herd effect factor has a positive impact on the herd behavior in forwarding health information. Especially, the impacts of informational social influence factors are greater, which had been ignored by previous literature. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Juan Wang

  2. School of Information Management, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou, China

    Kunfeng Liu

Authors
  1. Juan Wang
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  2. Kunfeng Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kunfeng Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  2. College of Management, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Daniel Zeng

  3. University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China

    Xiangbin Yan

  4. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Chunxiao Xing

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Wang, J., Liu, K. (2019). Understanding WeChat Users’ Herd Behavior in Forwarding Health Information: An Empirical Study in China. In: Chen, H., Zeng, D., Yan, X., Xing, C. (eds) Smart Health. ICSH 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11924. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34482-5_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34482-5_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34481-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34482-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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