The notion of vicarious interaction refers to online active users serving as surrogates for passive users to experience online interaction without being involved in the interaction. In the current study, we proposed an experiment to explore how vicarious interactions in online support communities influence observers’ attitudes toward online social support and result in their behavioral intentions to support others. Based on previous research, we not only focus on self-identification between the observer and online support provider. In addition, we shed light on the valence of feedback to the support provider to see how vicarious reinforcement affects passive users’ attitudes toward providing online support. A 2 (similarity: similar vs. dissimilar) by 2 (valence of feedback: positive vs. negative) experiment is conducted to test the hypotheses. The result suggested that observers’ attitudes can lead to a more positive behavioral intentions toward social support only when they see the support providers, whom they can identify with, receive positive feedback from the support seeker. However, the objectively similar or dissimilar between the support provider and observer did not influence people’s attitude or behavioral intention toward providing online social support. The findings contribute to the line of studies in vicarious interactions and reinforcement theory.
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