Exploring Doctors’ Willingness to Provide Online Counseling Services: The Roles of Motivations and Costs

Abstract

With the impetus of information communication technology (ICT), emerging eHealth has attracted increasing number of doctors' participation in online health platforms, which provide various potential benefits to doctors. However, previous studies on eHealth have seldom distinguished different service modes provided by doctors. In addition, the bulk of the literature has considered doctors' motivations based solely on online environments. To fill this gap, this study combines expectancy theory and the Bagozzi, Dholakia, and Basuroy (BDB) model to examine the relationships between anticipated outcomes, performance expectations, and effort intentions from online and offline perspectives. Doctors' behavioral intentions are further divided into two categories: the willingness to offer free services and paid services. Using SmartPLS, this study conducts structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze 311 sample data. The results show that extrinsic motivations (i.e., extrinsic rewards, expected relationships, and image) and intrinsic motivation (i.e., a sense of self-worth) significantly influence the desire to serve patients well, which in turn positively affects the willingness to offer free services and the willingness to offer paid services. Moreover, counseling time is confirmed as the main cost, which negatively moderates the relationships between desire and behavioral intentions. The findings provide theoretical insights for eHealth and provide practical suggestions to develop marketing strategies for online health platform providers.

A Tripartite Analysis of Online Healthcare Platforms: Evidence from Spring Rain Doctor in China

“…At the same time, registration costs, time costs, and reputation loss all affect whether doctors join OHP. It is proved that if a doctor provides a satisfactory service online, it may help his/her simultaneously gain reputation from both online and offline channels through word of mouth communication [25]. Rather, when doctors decide to offer online counseling services in their free time, the number of consultations and extra devoted time are considered to be negative factors affecting doctors' initiatives [25].…”

“…The results show that doctor's decision capital is a professional component which is important to platform maintaining exchange returns [24]. Chen combined the expectancy theory and the Bagozzi, Dholakia, and Basuroy (BDB) model, the results show that extrinsic motivations(i.e., extrinsic rewards, expected relationships, and image) and intrinsic motivation (i.e., a sense of self-worth) significantly influence the desire to serve patients well, which in turn positively affects the willingness to offer free services and the willingness to offer paid services [25]. Ma founded that performance expectations, effort expectations, social impact and convenience conditions have a positive impact on doctors' willingness to use and the usage behavior [26].…”

“…From the perspective of doctors, doctors can obtain economic and social benefits by joining OHP [24]. Specifically, doctors can obtain additional income and build a reputation by providing good online healthcare services [17] [25]. At the same time, doctors need to pay the time costs and registration costs.…”

“…format. In addition, doctors could observe timely feedback and service assessments of patients [25].…”

Digital Consultations in Swedish Primary Health Care: A Qualitative Study of Physicians’ Job control, Demand and Support

“…The new digital consultation allows remote working because primary care physicians can work from home, outside their traditional primary care environment [9,10]. Research on remote working has established that there can be problems concerning social isolation, lack of progress in career opportunities and not being visible in the organization as well as physical disadvantages in the work environment [11,12].…”