The popularity of Online Support Groups (OSGs) is ever increasing as OSGs enable people with (dis)similar health conditions to exchange social supports easily. Social support provision is a critical activity for individual well-being and community sustainability, yet the underlying social mechanism that promotes social support provision is underexplored. Employing social capital theory, the current study examines how brokerage and closure structures yield different forms of social capital such as non-redundant information and trust, which subsequently facilitate the diverse dimensions of informational and emotional support provisions, including quantity, quality, and timing. Methodologically, the study utilizes computational methods to collect online behavioral data from an online cancer community, measure network metrics and support provision behaviors, and capture the dynamic relationships between the network structure, social capital, and support provision behaviors. Results indicate that the brokerage structure and non-redundant information enhance the volume, uniqueness, and speed of information support provision. Although the closure structure and trust have a positive influence on the quality of emotional support, their overall impacts are limited in promoting information and emotional supports in the context of OSGs. The findings also indicate the importance of considering the dynamic development stage of OSGs in understanding the social mechanism of support provisions.
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