Information Worth Spreading: An Exploration of Information Sharing from Social Q&A to Other Social Media Platforms

Social Q&A (SQA) sites that allow users to exchange knowledge by asking and answering questions in natural language have become increasingly popular due to their ability to leverage the wisdom of crowds and provide personalized answers. Considerable research efforts have been devoted to studying users’ information and knowledge sharing within SQA sites. Past research, however, has neglected users’ information sharing behavior from SQA to other social media platforms (e.g., microblogs). In this study, we utilized Zhihu, one of the most popular Chinese SQA sites, as a lens to explore users’ information sharing from SQA to third parties, as this has become a widespread behavior among Chinese Web users. A survey that gathered 591 valid responses yielded interesting findings. Overall, respondents who had higher educational levels and who spent more daily time on the Internet via mobile devices were more likely to share SQA posts to other virtual spaces. Their experiences with Zhihu, their content preferences, and their friends’ sharing behavior also significantly influenced their sharing behavior. Our findings generate quite a few directions for future research.