Join or not: The impact of physicians’ group joining behavior on their online demand and reputation in online health communities

"What can I trust": Exploring impact of dual-channel service review quality on patients' online healthcare choices

OBJECTIVE

Online reviews are crucial for consumer decision-making, especially in online health communities (OHCs), where patients rely on reviews of physicians' services. This study aims to evaluate the quality of both offline and online service reviews and examine the impact of review quality on patients' online choices.

METHODS

This study developed models to evaluate the quality of dual-channel service reviews from OHCs. Based on signaling theory, we investigated how review quality affected patients' online choices. Data, including online and offline reviews of 1958 physicians, were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression to test the hypotheses.

RESULTS

Dual-channel service review quality positively affected patients' online choices, with a negative synergistic effect between offline and online review quality. Physician engagement positively moderated the effect of offline review quality on patients' online choices.

CONCLUSIONS

This study makes valuable theoretical contributions by providing models for evaluating dual-channel review quality and insights into patients' decision-making in OHCs.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Healthcare platforms can use these models to evaluate reviews and promote high-quality reviews. Physicians can balance their efforts between offline and online services. Patients are encouraged to consider reviews from both channels and to provide authentic feedback to enhance transparency and trust.

Exploring Client Preferences for Psychological Counselors in a Chinese Online Health Community: Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND

Although online health communities are acknowledged for their role in bridging the supply-demand gap in mental health services, the client decision-making process in these environments remains underexplored.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to explore the impact of different signals presented on psychological counselors' home pages on clients' choices.

METHODS

Adopting signaling theory as the framework, this study classified information into online and offline signals and developed a theoretical model to examine client choice behaviors. We collected data from 487 psychological counselors in a leading Chinese online mental health community during March, June, September, and December 2023. Based on these data, we constructed a 4-period balanced panel dataset. A fixed effects model was used to analyze which signals influence clients' choices of psychological counselors.

RESULTS

Regarding online signals, the service price (β=0.186, P<.001) and online reputation (β=0.489, P=.002) of psychological counselors positively influence clients' choices. Concerning offline signals, psychological counselors' practical experience (β=0.007, P<.001) is positively related to clients' choices. Moreover, the results indicate that the relationship between a counselor's prosocial behavior and clients' choices is not linear but rather exhibits an inverted U-shape.

CONCLUSIONS

This study reveals that the varied information provided by psychological counselors has distinct impacts on clients' choices in online health communities. It broadens the application of signaling theory to online behaviors and emphasizes the importance of both online and offline signals. These insights offer strategic guidance for counselors and online platforms to better meet potential clients' needs by optimizing the information presented on psychological counselors' home pages.

Exploring the Impact of Online Medical Team Engagement on Patient Satisfaction: A Semantic Features Perspective

Online medical teams (OMTs), a new mode of online healthcare service, have emerged in online health communities (OHCs) in China. This study attempts to explore the underlying mechanism of how OMTs' engagement influences patient satisfaction through the lens of semantic features. This study also scrutinizes the moderating effect of multiple specializations on the link between OMTs' engagement and semantic features. We utilized a linear model that had fixed effects controlled at the team level for analysis. A bootstrapping approach using 5000 samples was employed to test the mediation effects. The findings reveal that OMTs' engagement significantly improves language concreteness in online team consultations, which subsequently enhances patient satisfaction. OMT engagement has a negative impact on emotional intensity, ultimately decreasing patient satisfaction. Multiple specializations strengthen the impact of OMT engagement on both language concreteness and emotional intensity. This study contributes to the literature on OMTs and patient satisfaction, providing insights into patients' perceptions of OMTs' engagement during online team consultation. This study also generates several implications for the practice of OHCs and OMTs.

Knowledge transfer between physicians from different geographical regions in China's online health communities

Online Health Communities (OHCs) are a type of self-organizing platform that provide users with access to social support, information, and knowledge transfer opportunities. The medical expertise of registered physicians in OHCs plays a crucial role in maintaining the quality of online medical services. However, few studies have examined the effectiveness of OHCs in transferring knowledge between physicians and most do not distinguish between the explicit and tacit knowledge transferred between physicians. This study aims to demonstrate the cross-regional transfer characteristics of medical knowledge, especially tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on data collected from 4716 registered physicians on Lilac Garden (DXY.cn), a leading Chinese OHC, Exponential Random Graph Models are used to (1) examine the overall network and two subnets of tacit and explicit knowledge (i.e., clinical skills and medical information), and (2) identify patterns in the knowledge transferred between physicians, based on regional variations. Analysis of the network shows that physicians located in economically developed regions or regions with sufficient workforces are more likely to transfer medical knowledge to those from poorer regions. Analysis of the subnets demonstrate that only Gross Domestic Product (GDP) flows are supported in the clinical skill network since discussions around tacit knowledge are a direct manifestation of physicians' professional abilities. These findings extend current understanding about social value creation in OHCs by examining the medical knowledge flows generated by physicians between regions with different health resources. Moreover, this study demonstrates the cross-regional transfer characteristics of explicit and tacit knowledge to complement the literature on the effectiveness of OHCs to transfer different types of knowledge.

Patient Engagement as Contributors in Online Health Communities: The Mediation of Peer Involvement and Moderation of Community Status

This study focuses on patient engagement in online health communities (OHCs) and investigates the mechanism related to the impact of social support provided by patients on their personal engagement. Based on social support theory, we put forward a research model and conduct empirical analysis using datasets of 4797 patients with 160,484 posts and 1,647,569 replies from an online health community in China. The mediation of peer involvement and moderation of community status are also examined. The results indicate that the subdimensions of social support positively influence patient engagement with informational support exerting the greatest impact. Peer patient involvement imposes significant partial and positive mediating effects on the relationships, especially on informational support. Community status negatively moderates the impacts of social interactions and informational support on patient engagement in that the influence of social interactions and informational support are more profound for patients with low community status. The findings can bring an understanding of patient engagement in OCHs, and provide theoretical and practical implications to facilitate the development of an online healthcare service.

How the use of an online healthcare community affects the doctor-patient relationship: An empirical study in China

Possible improvements to the doctor-patient relationship are an important subject confronting national healthcare policy and health institutions. In recent years, online healthcare communities have changed the ways in which doctors and patients communicate, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, previous research on how usage of online healthcare communities has affected the doctor-patient relationship is rather limited. This paper proposes a research model to investigate the relationship between online healthcare community usage and the doctor-patient relationship. An analysis of 313 patients' data using structural equation modeling showed the following. First, the use of an online healthcare community has a positive impact on doctor-patient communication, helps improve the performance of healthcare procedures, and reduces healthcare costs. Second, doctor-patient communication and healthcare costs have a positive impact on patients' emotional dependence and patients' perception of healthcare quality, while healthcare procedures do not have this impact. Finally, patients' emotional dependence and perception of healthcare quality have a positive effect on doctor-patient relationship through the mediator of patients' satisfaction.

What makes helpful online mental health information? Empirical evidence on the effects of information quality and responders’ effort

Although online health communities are popular in supporting mental health, factors leading to the helpfulness of mental health information are still under-investigated. Based on the elaboration likelihood model and motivation theory, we incorporate two types of health information-related constructs, i.e., information quality (central route) and responders’ effort (peripheral route), and adopt reputation as an extrinsic motivation to build our model. We crawl data from a Chinese online mental health community and extract 11 key variables, and then analyze the model with negative binomial regression. The empirical results indicate that the effect of the length of health information on its helpfulness votes is positively significant, while the effect of readability of health information on its helpfulness votes is relatively negative. In terms of responders’ effort, both the timelines of the response and interactive feedback have a significant positive impact on helpfulness of health information votes, while these effects are negatively moderated by the online reputation of responders. This study contributes to the literature on information evaluation mechanisms in online health communities.

Is physician online information sharing always beneficial to patient education? An attention perspective

Aims

With the development of information technology, online health platforms and physician online information sharing play an important role in public health management and patient education. Is physician online information sharing always beneficial to patient education? From the attention perspective, this study aims to explore how physician online information sharing influences patient education, considering the contingent roles of physician online reputation and offline expertise.

Methods

A 6-month panel data of 61,566 physician-month observations from an online health platform in China was used to tested the proposed hypotheses. Considering the inefficiency and estimated bias of the ordinary least squares regression model, this study conducted the fixed models to test the direct and moderating effects.

Results

The results indicate that physician online information sharing is positively related to potential patient education, while the relationship between physician online information sharing and realized patient education is an inverted U-shape. Physician online reputation enhances the positive relationship between physician online information sharing and potential patient education, but physician offline expertise weakens the abovementioned relationship. In addition, physician offline expertise flattens the curvilinear effect of physician online information sharing on realized patient education.

Conclusion

This study contributes to the literature about attention theory and information sharing for patient education, and provides implications for practice.

"Not Sure Sharing Does Anything Extra for Me": Understanding How People with Cardiovascular Disease Conceptualize Sharing Personal Health Data with Peers

As people deal with cardiovascular disease (CVD), they are to self-monitor routinely and be aware of complications and the corresponding course of action. Engaging in these self-care behaviors is conducive to gaining knowledge of health status. Even so, knowledge of the self may be insufficient in making sense of chronic conditions. In constructing a new normal after health-related life disruptions, people often turn to peers (others facing similar health issues) and share personal health information with each other. Although health information-sharing behavior is well-documented, it remains underexplored what attitudes individuals with chronic conditions, such as CVD, have toward disclosing personal health data to peers and exploring those of others with similar conditions. We surveyed 39 people who reported being diagnosed with CVD to understand how they conceptualize sharing personal health data with their peers. By analyzing qualitative survey data thematically, we found that respondents expressed themselves as uncertain about the benefits of interacting with peers in such a manner. At the same time, they recognized an opportunity to learn new ideas to enhance CVD self-care in mutual data sharing. We also report participants' analytical orientation toward this sort of data sharing herein and elaborate on what sharing a range of personal health data could mean. In light of the existing literature, this study unpacks the notion of sharing in a different population/pathology and with more nuance, particularly by distinguishing between disclosing one's data and exploring others'.

Determining Factors Affecting the Users' Participation of Online Health Communities: An Integrated Framework of Social Capital and Social Support

As the national awareness of health keeps deepening, online health communities (OHCs) have achieved rapid development. Users' participation is critically important to the sustainable development of OHCs. Nevertheless, users usually lack the motive for participation. Based on the social capital theory, this research examines factors influencing users' participation in OHCs. The purpose of this research is to find out decisive factors that influence users' participation in OHCs, enrich the understanding of users' participation in OHCs, and help OHCs address the issue of sustainable development. The research model was empirically tested using 1277 responses from an online survey conducted in China. Data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM). We found informational support and emotional support to have significant direct effects over the structural capital, relational capital and cognitive capital of OHCs. Meanwhile, it is observed that relational capital and cognitive capital degree have a significant influence on knowledge acquisition and knowledge contribution of OHCs. For researchers this study provides a basis for further refinement of individual models of users' participation. For practitioners, understanding the social capital is crucial to users' knowledge acquisition and knowledge contribution that achieve high participation in OHCs.

Exploring member’s knowledge sharing intention in online health communities: The effects of social support and overload

This study explores the determinants of members’ participation intention in online health communities (OHC) from both the facilitators and barriers points of view. From the facilitators perspective, each member’s subjective well-being plays a crucial role in sharing intention. On the other hand, from the barriers point of view, social network site exhaustion would negatively affect. The survey was conducted on two online support groups, including parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and caregivers of dementia disease. This study collected 330 questionnaires from social network sites to examine the research model. The results showed that social support positively affects members’ self-efficacy; in turn, self-efficacy has a positive effect on subjective well-being. Overload has an impact on psychological distress. Moreover, members’ subjective well-being determined their knowledge sharing intention.