Does Online Community Participation Contribute to Medication Adherence? An Empirical Study of Patients with Chronic Diseases.

Effectively improving the medication adherence of patients is crucial. Past studies focused on treatment-related factors, but little attention has been paid to factors concerning human beliefs such as trust or self-efficacy. The purpose of this study is to explore the following aspects of patients with chronic diseases: (1) The relationship between emotional support, informational support, self-efficacy, and trust; (2) the relationship between self-efficacy, trust, and medication adherence; and, (3) whether chronic patients' participation in different types of online communities brings about significant statistical differences in the relationships between the abovementioned variables.