The Effect Of EWOM On Purchase Intention In EHealth

The problems such as difficulty in seeing a doctor,registering,queuing up and so on are prominent in our country.The shortage and the unequal distribution of highquality medical resources are the most important reasons for the disorder of medical service.eHealth can alleviate the unbalanced distribution of medical resources to some extent by providing online registration,graphic consultation and video consultation.With the development of the Internet,millions of citizens are searching online health information and publishing content about their health.Patients are engaging with other patients in online communities using different types of social media.Internet and social media are becoming new tool to look for health information.Due to the particularity of the medical and health industry,the accuracy and authenticity of health information is directly related to patient's health and even fatal,so the accuracy and authenticity of health information is the most important question.Recently,the events such as "Putian Department" and "Wei Zexi" also show that false health information may bring great harm,and even threaten the safety of life.Therefore,how to identify useful and true information when searching for online health services becomes the key question.In China,researches on eHealth mainly focuses on the macroscopic direction,including the thinking on the development of eHealth,how to protect patients' privacy in eHealth process,the legal issues related to e Health,and the medical concept,medical model.The study about online word-of-mouth(eWOM)in eHealth is very rare.In this paper,based on the theory of communication process,focus on the characteristics of eWOM and eWOM receiver,analyze their effect on consumer trust and how they ultimately affect consumers' purchase intention.This paper discusses the effect mechanism of e WOM on consumers' purchase intention in eHealth.A model is build based on the characteristics of eWOM(volume,quality and timeliness),word-of-mouth receiver characteristics(trust propensity,involvement,and eWOM experience),Trust(cognitive trust and affective trust)and Purchase intention.The results show that the volume and timeliness of eWOM,trust propensity and involvement of eWOM receivers have significant effects on consumers' cognitive trust,affective trust and purchase intention;Cognitive trust and affective trust significantly affect the purchase intention,which confirm the result in other areas of the eWOM research.However,eWOM quality and eWOM experience have no significant effect on cognitive trust and affective trust.This could be caused by the lack of patients' professional health knowledge,which lower their eWOM quality perception ability.