Purpose: Taking Zhihu as the object for a case study, we intend to analyze the key factors that have affected users on adopting answers in social Q&A (SQA) websites.

Design/methodology/approach: With information adoption model (IAM) as the theoretical foundation and widely accepted evaluation criteria for answer quality in SQA sites as variables, we constructed a factor model that has influenced SQA community users to adopt offered answers. With the partial least squares (PLS) technique, our model was then empirically tested through a sample of 311 Zhihu users.

Findings: Our results showed that answer usefulness is the most effective variable, and answer interactivity and answer entertainment both have positive and significant impacts on users' attitude to adopt answers in an SQA community. Except for novelty, other three components of answer quality, i.e. knowledge, reliability, and solution to the problem have all significant effect on answer usefulness.

Research limitations: First, due to the limited sample size, it is still questionable if our research results based on Zhihu could be applied to other SQA communities. Second, our questionnaires were mainly designed to investigate how users felt about the answers in an SQA site, but did not differentiate the content of the answer itself.

Practical implications: As a three-year-old SQA platform, Zhihu has developed very quickly with its high-quality answers and public intellectual users, and has been regarded as one of the representatives of fast emerging Chinese SQA communities in recent years. Our study could help shed light on users' information sharing and knowledge adoption behaviors in a Chinese SQA site, such as Zhihu.

Originality/value: Compared with previous studies on answer quality assessments in SQA sites and on information adoption model, to the best of our knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies which combined answer qualities with users' intention of adopting SQA answers. Our study on user answer adoption in Zhihu community could further develop the theory of IAM. This study showed that answer usefulness is the most important motivation of Zhihu users in the process of adopting answers.

Purpose: Taking Zhihu as the object for a case study, we intend to analyze the key factors that have affected users on adopting answers in social Q&A (SQA) websites.

Design/methodology/approach: With information adoption model (IAM) as the theoretical foundation and widely accepted evaluation criteria for answer quality in SQA sites as variables, we constructed a factor model that has influenced SQA community users to adopt offered answers. With the partial least squares (PLS) technique, our model was then empirically tested through a sample of 311 Zhihu users.

Findings: Our results showed that answer usefulness is the most effective variable, and answer interactivity and answer entertainment both have positive and significant impacts on users' attitude to adopt answers in an SQA community. Except for novelty, other three components of answer quality, i.e. knowledge, reliability, and solution to the problem have all significant effect on answer usefulness.

Research limitations: First, due to the limited sample size, it is still questionable if our research results based on Zhihu could be applied to other SQA communities. Second, our questionnaires were mainly designed to investigate how users felt about the answers in an SQA site, but did not differentiate the content of the answer itself.

Practical implications: As a three-year-old SQA platform, Zhihu has developed very quickly with its high-quality answers and public intellectual users, and has been regarded as one of the representatives of fast emerging Chinese SQA communities in recent years. Our study could help shed light on users' information sharing and knowledge adoption behaviors in a Chinese SQA site, such as Zhihu.

Originality/value: Compared with previous studies on answer quality assessments in SQA sites and on information adoption model, to the best of our knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies which combined answer qualities with users' intention of adopting SQA answers. Our study on user answer adoption in Zhihu community could further develop the theory of IAM. This study showed that answer usefulness is the most important motivation of Zhihu users in the process of adopting answers.