Eudemonic Well-Being Topics and Answer Acceptance in Online Depression Q&A Communities: A Configurational Approach

Prior research on online Q&A communities has concentrated primarily on how such communities can benefit patients with physical illnesses. Coming from the angle of mental disorders, this study explores how content on online Q&A communities can be structured to benefit individuals with depression. Espousing the theoretical lens of eudemonic wellbeing, we derive a typology of content elements that influence the receptivity of answers posted in online Q&A communities for depression. Data for this study was first collected from Zhihu, an online Q&A community in China before Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was employed to extract topic content. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was subsequently applied to verify the association of distinct eudemonic topical configurations with answer acceptance.