Effectiveness of Interactive Tools in Online Health Care Communities: Social Exchange Theory Perspective

Abstract

Background Although the COVID-19 pandemic will have a negative effect on China’s economy in the short term, it also represents a major opportunity for internet-based medical treatment in the medium and long term. Compared with normal times, internet-based medical platforms including the Haodf website were visited by 1.11 billion people, the number of new registered users of all platforms increased by 10, and the number of new users’ daily consultations increased by 9 during the pandemic. The continuous participation of physicians is a major factor in the success of the platform, and economic return is an important reason for physicians to provide internet-based services. However, no study has provided the effectiveness of interactive tools in online health care communities to influence physicians’ returns. Objective The effect of internet-based effort on the benefits and effectiveness of interactive effort tools in internet-based health care areas remains unclear. Thus, the goals of this study are to examine the effect of doctors’ internet-based service quality on their economic returns during COVID-19 social restrictions, to examine the effect of mutual help groups on doctors’ economic returns during COVID-19 social restrictions, and to explore the moderating effect of disease privacy on doctors’ efforts and economic returns during COVID-19 social restrictions. Methods On the basis of the social exchange theory, this study establishes an internet-based effort exchange model for doctors. We used a crawler to download information automatically from Haodf website. From March 5 to 7, 2020, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, cross-sectional information of 2530 doctors were collected. Results Hierarchical linear regression showed that disease privacy (β=.481; P<.001), reputation (β=.584; P<.001), and service quality (β=.560; P<.001) had a significant positive effect on the economic returns of the physicians. The influence of mutual help groups on earnings increases with an increase in the degree of disease privacy (β=.189; P<.001), indicating that mutual help groups have a stronger effect on earnings when patients ask questions about diseases regarding which they desire privacy. Conclusions For platform operators, the results of this study can help the platform understand how to improve doctors’ economic returns, especially regarding helping a specific doctor group improve its income to retain good doctors. For physicians on the platform, this study will help doctors spend their limited energy and time on tools that can improve internet-based consultation incomes. Patients who receive internet-based health care services extract information about a doctor based on the doctor’s internet-based efforts to understand the doctor’s level of professionalism and personality to choose the doctor they like the most. The data used in this study may be biased or not representative of all medical platforms, as they were collected from a single website.

Combined effects of cues influencing patients’ purchasing behavior in online health-care communities: qualitative comparative analysis based on cue utilization theory

“…Some variables including longevity, appointment registration, welcome message, article and mutual-help group [ 13 , 31 ]. Therefore, this paper argues that the effect of cueing alone is not enough to fully reveal the influencing factors of patients’ purchasing behavior in OHCs, and it is necessary to continue to explore the influence of different cueing combinations on patients’ purchasing behavior through combination effect analysis.…”

“…(2)Physicians set price for online services based on individual circumstances. High prices are used to deliver high quality information [ 31 ], in other words, patients deem that high prices represent high service quality. (3) Physicians publish medical articles in their areas of expertise on their home page.…”

“…(3)The reason why customers prefer to patronize century-old store is that the stores with longevity can convey a signal of good service quality to customers. Similarly, the longer a physician’s homepage has operated, the better the quality of his or her service has been recognized by patients [ 31 ]. (4)In a physician’s homepage, whether the function of appointment registration is opened will affect patients’ online purchasing behavior.…”

“…were studied for their impact on online sales volume [ 43 ], and merchant website feature applications had an impact on online sales volume [ 37 ]. The content displayed on online physician web pages (word of expressing welcome, service prices, articles, mutual-help group [ 31 ], etc.) are cues independent of the product or service, i.e., external attributes, and they can be altered by the physician at any time and, therefore, are also low-scope cues.…”

The Construction and Operational Models of Internet Hospitals in China: A Hospital-Based Survey Study

“…Jiang et al studied the characteristics of online consultations and inquiries through China's largest online medical platform [24]. Using the social exchange theory perspective, Ren et al examined the effect of doctors' internet-based service quality on their economic returns during the COVID-19 social restrictions [25]. The geographic distribution of the internet hospitals that participated in this study.…”