The Impact Of Online Social Support On Physicians’ Social Returns

With the development of online health community,the sustainable interaction between doctors and patients plays an important role in optimizing medical resources distribution,improving doctor-patient relationship and helping patients manage diseases.Patients can get social support from doctors by participating in online health community,while doctors can get economic and social returns from patients at the same time.As an important process of social exchange in online health community,the factors affecting physicians’ economic returns in physician-patient interaction has been mainly studied by scholars at present.However,few studies focus on the factors affecting physicians’ social returns.Besides,the impact of physicians’ online social support on patients’ social returns to physicians from the perspective of doctor-patient interaction has not been verified.Based on the theory of social support and social exchange,this study explored the impact of online social support on physicians’ social returns by text mining.The study can not only make up for the shortcomings of existing research,but also provide management suggestions for the sustainable development of online health community.In this study,we investigate how online social support affects physicians’ social returns and the heterogeneity of this relationship when patients and physicians have different characteristics.Specifically,the following questions are asked:(1)How does the informational and emotional support in online health community affect physicians’ social returns?(2)Do the patients’ disease risk and the physicians’ professional titles mediate this relationship?(3)Is there an interaction mechanism between online informational support and emotional support on physicians’ social returns? In order to solve these problems,we propose hypotheses based on the theory of social support and social exchange.Then we collect physicians’ information and consultation records of heart disease and rheumatism from the "Haodf.com" and construct variables by text mining.At last,eight unbalanced panel data is formed.Then the econometric analysis of the data is carried out through the two-way fixed effect model to verify the hypothesis.In addition,we use a variety of tests to verify that the results are robust.The results show that online emotional support and informational support can positively affect physicians’ social returns.In addition,patients’ disease risk can positively moderate the relationship between online emotional support and physicians’ social returns and negatively moderate the relationship between online informational support and physicians’ social returns.The physicians’ professional titles can positively moderate the relationship between online informational support and physicians’ social returns and negatively moderate the relationship between online emotional support and physicians’ social returns.Finally,physicians’ different types of social support have interaction.Physicians provide informational support and emotional support simultaneously can enhance the ability of social support to bring social returns to themselves.This study clarifies the impact of social support on physicians’ social returns in online health community,which enriches the related research and has some theoretical contribution.In addition,this study provides guidance for continuous doctor-patient interaction and personalized online participation for patients with different disease risk and physicians with different professional titles,which is of practical significance.