Mobile health community loyalty development process in China: an empirical study from information seeking perspective

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective. Design/methodology/approach: A covariance-based structural equation model was developed to explore the mobile health community loyalty development process from information seeking perspective and tested with LISREL 9.30 for the 191 mobile health platform user samples. Findings: The empirical results demonstrate that the information seeking perspective offers an interesting explanation for the mobile health community loyalty development process. All hypotheses in the proposed research model are supported except the relationship between privacy and trust. The two types of mobile health community loyalty—attitudal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are explained with 58 and 37% variance. Originality/value: This paper has brought out the information seeking perspective in the loyalty formation process in mobile health community and identified several important constructs for this perspective for the loyalty formation process including information quality, communication with doctors and communication with patients.