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Hair loss is often overlooked but psychologically challenging. However, the emergence of online health communities provides opportunities for hair loss patients to seek social support through self-disclosure. Nevertheless, not all disclosures receive the desired support. This research explores what patients disclose within the community and how their health narrative (content, form and linguistic style) regarding self-disclosure influences the social support they receive.

This study investigated a 13-year-old online support group for Chinese hair loss patients with nearly 240,000 members. Using structural topic modeling, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, and a negative binomial model, the research analyzed the content of self-disclosure and the interrelationships between social support and three narrative dimensions of self-disclosure.

Self-disclosures are classified into 14 topics, grouped under analytical, informative and emotional categories. Emotion-related self-disclosures, whether in content or effective word use, receive deeper social support. Longer and image-rich posts attract more support in quantity, but not necessarily in quality, while cognitive words have a limited impact.

This study addresses the previously overlooked population of hair loss patients within online health communities. It employs a more comprehensive health narrative framework to explore the relationship between self-disclosure and social support, utilizing unsupervised structural topic modeling methods to mine text. The research offers practical implications for how patients seek support and for healthcare professionals in developing doctor-patient communication strategies.

Researchers continue to address the concept of self-disclosure because it is foundational for helping social networking sites (SNS) function and thrive. Nevertheless, the authors' literature review indicates that uncertainty remains around the underlying mechanisms and factors involved in the self-disclosure process. The purpose of this research is to better understand the self-disclosure process from the lens of dual-process theory (DPT). The authors consider both the controlled factors (i.e. self-presentation and reciprocity) and an automatic factor (i.e. social influence to use an SNS) involved in self-disclosure and broaden The authors proposed a model to include the interactive facets of enjoyment.

The proposed model was empirically validated by conducting a survey among users of WeChat Moments in China.

As hypothesized, this research confirms that enjoyment and automatic processing (i.e. social influence to use an SNS) are complementary in the SNS self-disclosure process and enjoyment negatively moderates the positive relationship between controlled factor (i.e. self-presentation) and self-disclosure.

Theoretically, this study offers a new perspective on explaining SNS self-disclosure by adopting DPT. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant SNS research by applying DPT to examine how the controlled factors and the automatic factor shape self-disclosure processes and how enjoyment influences vary across these processes – enriching knowledge about SNS self-disclosure behaviors. Practically, the authors provide important design guidelines to practitioners concerning devising mechanisms to foster more automatic-enjoyable value-added functions to improve SNS users' participation and engagement.

This paper aims to study individuals’ information service satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in China’s urban communities.

The researchers analyse people’s uncertainties during the pandemic and argue that uncertainties caused by the lockdown can negatively affect people. By reducing people’s uncertainty during the pandemic, community staff members can improve individuals’ information service satisfaction and social order. This study constructs a conceptual model that includes key transparency and self-disclosure constructs and their relationships that can contribute to the trust and satisfaction of the community information service phenomenon. The researchers collected 489 responses to test their hypothesis from an online survey of Chinese residents in areas where the strict lockdown policy was implemented.

The empirical results show that policy and goods information transparency significantly affect information service satisfaction in a positive way, with goods information transparency having the highest impact. Second, self-disclosure of community staff members is also an effective way to increase information service satisfaction. Finally, trust plays a mediating role in the influence of information transparency and self-disclosure on information service satisfaction.

This paper innovatively uses uncertainty reduction theory to examine the effects of information transparency and self-disclosure on satisfaction with community information services. It expands the research in the field of information service satisfaction and extends the scope of the research subjects of self-disclosure.

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

This study explores the motivations for sharing personal information and self-disclosure by mentally ill people in public and private Facebook groups. The purpose of the self-disclosure comparison between public and private groups is to understand how mentally ill people use different kinds of online communication channels in order to advance their goals and needs concerning their illness.

The study was carried out using questionnaires distributed in Facebook groups for people with mental illnesses. A total of 123 full and valid questionnaires were received. Statistical analysis was performed on the data.

Findings revealed that there are no significant differences between public and private groups concerning motivations for self-disclosure and that both types of groups create a safe and supportive place for mentally ill people. However, findings suggest that participants in public groups tend to display higher social involvement than those who participate in private groups.

This is a path breaking study on the entire subject of discourse of people with mental illnesses in private Facebook groups and its importance is derived from this. The study clarified and emphasized the importance of the sense of belonging to a community. Moreover, findings encourage people with mental illnesses to make use of social media channels to meet their social and personal needs.

Drawing on social penetration theory (SPT) and social exchange theory, this study examines whether and why customer empathy for frontline employees (FLEs) and employee self-disclosure influence customer citizenship behavior (CCB).

This study’s hypotheses were tested using two studies (study 1 had an experimental design, and study 2 had a survey design) with restaurant customers.

The results indicate that when customers have a higher level of customer empathy for FLE, the likelihood that customers will exhibit CCB increases. Employee self-disclosure provides a greater advantage in fostering CCB. A mediating effect of rapport in the relationship between customer empathy for FLE, employee self-disclosure and CCB is also found, while no interaction effect of customer empathy for FLE and employee self-disclosure on CCB is supported.

Maintaining a focus on the interpersonal nature of interactions between customers and employees in co-creating values, this research advances the CCB literature by newly identifying customer empathy for FLEs and employee self-disclosure as predictors of CCB that have not yet been tapped. The underlying mechanism via rapport is also explained using the value co-creation perspective.

This paper aims to discuss a survey, carried out by the authors, of 256 employees employed in public and private manufacturing organizations in north India, to determine if emotional maturity factors have positive association with self-disclosure in the Indian context. Specifically, capitalization and social exchange theories support as major theoretical framework to examine the proposed relationship.

The sample data used were collected through a cross-sectional survey-based research design and a convenience sampling method. Totally, 290 questionnaires were distributed during office hours, administered with a paper and pencil survey. However, in the final analysis, only 256 responses were considered for analysis using multiple hierarchical regression analysis.

Results reveal that all dimensions of emotional maturity positively associated with self-disclosure. This study fully supports the applicability of capitalization and social exchange theories while explaining the proposed relationships in Indian context.

The present study used a cross-sectional survey-based research design; future studies may use longitudinal research design.

The study shows how to develop collective work culture and supportive work climate through emotional maturity and self-disclosure. Thus, employees become accustomed to multicultural team and cultural diversity issues at the workplace. The study also recommended that the organized employees social gathering will create positive feeling, and that such feelings of belonging to a group among employees will give reasons for self-disclosure and finally, in turn, to employee effectiveness.

More predominantly, the proposed association has not been examined before and the findings serve as a potential policy guideline for the self-disclosure literature through the perspective of capitalization and social exchange theories in understudied non-US cultures such as India.

Social networking sites (SNSs) have significantly influenced people's lives and changed their behavior. Although previous research has explored self-disclosure in virtual communities, little is known about the impact of other users, particularly their online social support, on self-disclosure. The aim of this study is to explore how online social support dimensions (i.e., emotional, informational, esteem, instrumental and network support) influence people's self-disclosure, which in turn affects their commitment to SNSs.

Based on social exchange theory, this study proposes a research model that explores the role of other users on self-disclosure. This study collects data from a sample of 558 respondents and applies the structural equation modeling technique to test the research model.

The findings show that users are motivated to disclose information and commit to a specific SNS because of the supportive climate. Results also show that self-disclosure mediates the effect of online social support on users' commitment to SNSs.

This study focuses on the influence of other users' roles on self-disclosure on SNSs, extending the application of social exchange theory.

This study aims to investigate the cybersecurity awareness manifested as protective behavior to explain self-disclosure in social networking sites. The disclosure of information about oneself is associated with benefits as well as privacy risks. The individuals self-disclose to gain social capital and display protective behaviors to evade privacy risks by careful cost-benefit calculation of disclosing information.

This study explores the role of cyber protection behavior in predicting self-disclosure along with demographics (age and gender) and digital divide (frequency of Internet access) variables by conducting a face-to-face survey. Data were collected from 284 participants. The model is validated by using multiple hierarchal regression along with the artificial intelligence approach.

The results revealed that cyber protection behavior significantly explains the variance in self-disclosure behavior. The complementary use of five machine learning (ML) algorithms further validated the model. The ML algorithms predicted self-disclosure with an area under the curve of 0.74 and an F1 measure of 0.70.

The findings suggest that costs associated with self-disclosure can be mitigated by educating the individuals to heighten their cybersecurity awareness through cybersecurity training programs.

This study uses a hybrid approach to assess the influence of cyber protection behavior on self-disclosure using expectant valence theory (EVT).

This study examines whether relational capital influences self-disclosure behavior through the mechanism of needs-based motivation in virtual communities.

This study adopts hierarchical linear model (HLM) to differentiate between the relationships at different levels, with 378 online questionnaires recovered from 42 virtual communities.

The results show that group-level relational capital is positively related to self-disclosure and affects it through the partially mediating mechanism of motivation. Relational capital also strengthens the positive influence of the need to be on trend on individual self-disclosure behavior.

This study makes four research contributions. Firstly, we identify the means by which relational capital established within a virtual community influences user disclosure behavior. This focus differs from those of previous studies, which have emphasized privacy and security of information systems, cost–benefit considerations, and/or adopted personality traits as the research basis. Secondly, this study examines and verifies the mediating mechanism of motivation, establishing an alternative perspective for theoretical studies, and providing future studies with a reference for investigating the self-disclosure behavior of members. Thirdly, this research introduces and verifies the moderating effects of relational capital based on member relationships, thus making further theoretical and empirical contributions. Finally, we adopt HLM to conduct our analyses, thereby ensuring higher precision regarding the explanatory power of group-level explanatory variables for individual-level dependent variables.