[Purpose/significance] This study aims to explore the relationship between users' online and offline social capital and their online behavior in a social Q&A site:zhihu.com. [Method/process] We collected profile information and activity data of 6 927 users from 10 medical and health topics, and analyzed the characteristics of online social capital accumulation and community behaviors of users. We ranked different offline social capitals. [Result/conclusion] 1) Some offline social capital such as the ranking of universities users graduated from is positively related to his/her cognitive and structural online social capital. However, the job position level is not related to the online capital. 2) Users with higher offline capital contributed more answers. 3) Online structural capital is positively related to the number of questions, articles, and followings; whereas, online cognitive social capital is positively related to the number of answers and articles. These results may help site managers to identify core users and optimize the user motivation mechanism. Our sample users are participants in medical and health topics, so the generalizability of the conclusions should be further examined.
Zhang Lu
,
Zhang Pengyi
. The Relationship Between Online/Offline Social Capital and User Behavior in Social Q&A: the Case of Medical and Health Topics in Zhihu[J]. Library and Information Service, 2017
, 61(17)
: 84
-90
.
DOI: 10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2017.17.011
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