Introduction: Online mental health communities may provide new opportunities for rehabilitation for people with mental illness, so it is important to understand the factors that influence the continued use of online mental health communities by people with mental illness.
Methods: From the perspective of empowerment, based on the theory of health self-efficacy and expectation confirmation, this study explored the mediating role of health self-efficacy and expectation confirmation in the empowerment process of patients in online mental health communities and users' intention to continue using online mental health communities. To verify this model, we obtained 272 valid questionnaires. The SmartPLS 3.0 software was selected for model construction and empirical analysis.
Results: Health self-efficacy completely mediates the relationship between the empowerment process (i.e., emotional support, information support, helping others and sharing experiences) and users' intention to continue using an online mental health community. Expectation confirmation partially mediates the relationship between the empowerment process (i.e., information support and finding recognition) and users' intention to continue using an online mental health community.
Conclusion: The empowerment process is the main predictor of user health self-efficacy and expectation confirmation. This study has certain theoretical and practical significance for online mental health community research.
Keywords: continuous intention; empowerment theory; expectation confirmation theory; health self-efficacy theory; online mental health communities.