Why are you? Exploring patients’ behavior in selecting physicians in online health communities

IF 8.2 2区管理学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Information & Management Pub Date : 2025-05-11 DOI:10.1016/j.im.2025.104176

Zhuo Sun , Kaiyang Wang , Yan Jin , Zongshui Wang , Ruixian Yang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper examines the factors influencing patients' choice of physicians in OHCs (online health communities), using the ELM (elaboration likelihood model), a classic model of user information processing, as its foundation. We assess physicians' expertise and medical outcomes through the central routes, which includes platform quality and medical quality, and the peripheral routes, which refers to electronic word of mouth (eWOM). We introduce list price, gamification, and high-privacy disease as moderating variables to explore the dynamic decision making scenarios regarding patients' healthcare selection behavior. To validate our hypotheses, data were collected in two phases (November 2022 and August 2024) from 15 major departments of China's largest online health community, HaoDaifu Online, yielding 9123 physician profiles and 18,246 matched patient-physician pairs. Using the panel data, the majority of our hypotheses received support, providing deeper insights into the decision making process behind patients' physician selection and its implications for online medical services.

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为什么是你？探索在线健康社区中患者选择医生的行为

本文以用户信息处理的经典模型ELM（细化似然模型）为基础，探讨了在线健康社区中患者对医生选择的影响因素。我们通过中心途径（包括平台质量和医疗质量）和外围途径（指电子口碑）来评估医生的专业知识和医疗效果。我们引入标价、游戏化和高隐私性疾病作为调节变量，探讨患者医疗选择行为的动态决策情景。为了验证我们的假设，我们分两个阶段（2022年11月和2024年8月）从中国最大的在线健康社区“好医生在线”的15个主要部门收集数据，获得9123名医生资料和18246对匹配的患者-医生对。使用小组数据，我们的大多数假设都得到了支持，从而更深入地了解了患者选择医生背后的决策过程及其对在线医疗服务的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Information & Management 工程技术-计算机：信息系统

CiteScore

17.90

自引率

6.10%

发文量

123

审稿时长

1 months

期刊介绍： Information & Management is a publication that caters to researchers in the field of information systems as well as managers, professionals, administrators, and senior executives involved in designing, implementing, and managing Information Systems Applications.