The Impact Of Online Doctor Reputation And Doctor Effort On Consultation Amount

With the development of economy and the continuous improvement of people’sliving standard, the demand of medical resources is becoming high and high.However, the medical resources in our country are serious shortage, and howallocate medical resources effectively need to be solved. Online HealthcareCommunity (OHC) provides effective ways to solve the problem. However, OHCsare different from traditional medical doctor patient communication. In OHCs,because patients and doctors come from different areas and different time, they can’tcommunicate with each other face to face. In addition, there are a lot of uncertaintyin doctor‘s service quality, and doctors have more information about the quality ofservice than patients, so information asymmetry exists in OHCs. Reputationfeedback mechanism can provide signals and incentives to solve the informationasymmetry effectively. In OHCs, patients can view doctors’ home page to getdoctors’ personal information (e.g. the doctor’s feedback rate, other patients’experience, service price). Therefore, the research on how doctor effort, reputationand service price affect the consultation amount is very significant.The paper conducts the research from three perspectives.1) The impact ofinformation that generates from reputation feedback mechanism on consultationamount.2) The paper explores the impact of doctor online effort on consultationamount according to the use condition and structure of OHCs.3) The paper studiesthe impact of service price on consultation amount according to different type ofdiseases. The paper establishes the research model and builds the hypotheses. Then,the paper uses the data collection tool to collect our research data. After the dataprocessing, we establish the multiple regression models to test our hypotheses.Our results show that1) doctor online reputation and effort have a significantand positive effect on consultation amount;2) service price has a partial mediatingeffect on the relationship between online reputation and consultation amount, andalso the relationship between effort breadth and consultation amount;3) the type ofdiseases has a moderating effect on the relationship between service price andconsultation amount. The paper explores the effectiveness of the signal, such asonline reputation, effort and service price, in OHCs. The paper has theoryimplication and practice implication. In theory, the study provides and enrichestheory base and methods for the future research on OHCs. In practice, the study putsforward suggestions to how doctors and patients participate in OHCs effectively,promote doctor patient communication, and improve doctor patient relationship.