It Matters If My Friends Stop Smoking: Social Support for Behavior Change in Social Media

A growing body of research has examined whether and how an individual can leverage online social networks to receive social support for health behavior change. This prior research largely focuses on attributes of the post content and the experiences and concerns of people posting. Less is known about moderators and mediators that influence whether and how one's social network will respond to a request for support. Using a factorial survey experiment, we find evidence that attitudes toward specific types of health behaviors greatly increase likelihood of response to a post, and that targeting close-tie relationships may increase effectiveness of social media based behavior change interventions, particularly related to smoking cessation.