Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: The Effects of Mismatches between Social Support and Health Outcomes in an Online Weight Loss Community

Lu (Lucy) Yan

Production and Operations Management, 2018, vol. 27, issue 1, 9-27

Abstract: The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world. To help address this problem, social support is gaining credibility as a powerful tool to facilitate weight loss because it can affect people's behavior. Although social support has long been recognized for its effectiveness in promoting health, we argue, in this study, that social support may not always lead to good outcomes. Specifically, we differentiate between support providers and support seekers, and examine whether providing and receiving support affect individuals’ weight†loss outcomes differently. By analyzing a group of individuals participating in an online weight†loss community, we show that providing and receiving support does affect weight†loss outcomes in different ways. First, the influences are dynamic. Second, while providing support is positively associated with weight†loss progress, receiving support could hinder weight†loss outcome for a person with high self†efficacy in weight†loss progress. Third, by categorizing social support into different types, we find evidence suggesting that the match between needed and received social support type also influences individuals’ performance in the weight†loss process. Furthermore, mismatches of social support could negatively affect weight†loss outcomes. These findings have implications for maximizing the usefulness of social support for participants in the online environment as well as for clinicians who refer individuals to online weight†loss communities and for those who design them.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12793

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:27:y:2018:i:1:p:9-27

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1937-5956

Access Statistics for this article

Production and Operations Management is currently edited by Kalyan Singhal

More articles in Production and Operations Management from Production and Operations Management Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().