Healthier together: Social support, self-regulation and goal management for chronic conditions in online health communities

•We empirically examine the effect of self-regulation and social support in online health communities.•We explore how information support and emotional support impact health goal management.•We explore how self-reflection and attention control impact health goal management.•We develop a research model based on social cognitive theory. We investigate the effectiveness of goal management in online health communities (OHCs) in light of social support and self-regulation for patients with chronic diseases. With a five-year longitudinal data set, we found that informational support contributes to both goal progress and self-reflection. Emotional support encourages patients to practice self-reflection if the goals are set for non-mental diseases. We also find that patients' self-reflection promotes goal progress. Finally, the lack of attention control negatively affects goal progress and self-reflection. Grounded in social cognitive theory, this study is among the first to empirically examine the effect of self-regulation and social support in OHCs.