Ouyang Peng, Wang Jian-Jun, Jasmine Chang Ai-Chih
School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
Martin Tuchman School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, United States.
Int J Med Inform. 2021 Dec 25;158:104674. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2021.104674.
Information asymmetry causes barriers for the patient's decision-making in the online health community. Patients can rely on the physician's self-disclosed information to alleviate it. However, the impact of physician's self-disclosed information on the patient's decision has rarely been discussed.
To investigate the impact of the physician's self-disclosed information on the patient's decision in the online health community and to examine the moderating effect of the physician's online reputation.
Drawing on the limited-capacity model of attention, we develop a theoretical model to estimate the impact of physician's self-disclosure information on patient's decision and the contingent roles of physician's online reputation in online healthcare community by econometric methods. We designed a web crawler based on R language program to collect more than 20,000 physicians' data from their homepage in Haodf-a leading online healthcare community platform in China. The attributes of the physician's information disclosure are measured by the following variables: emotion orientation, the quantity of information and the semantic topics diversity.
The empirical analysis derives the following findings: (1) The emotion orientation in physician's self-disclosure information is positively associated with patient's decision; (2) Both excessive quantity of information and semantic topics diversity can raise barriers for patient's decision; (3) When the level of physician's online reputation is high, the negative effect of the quantity of information and semantic topics diversity are all strengthened while the positive effect of the emotion orientation is not strengthened.
This study has a profound importance for a deep understanding of the impact of physician's self-disclosure information and contributes to the literature on information disclosure, the limited capacity model of attention, patient's decision. Also, this study provides implications for practice.
信息不对称给患者在在线健康社区中的决策造成了障碍。患者可以依靠医生自行披露的信息来缓解这一问题。然而，医生自行披露的信息对患者决策的影响却鲜有讨论。
研究医生自行披露的信息对患者在在线健康社区中决策的影响，并考察医生在线声誉的调节作用。
借鉴注意力有限容量模型，我们构建了一个理论模型，通过计量经济学方法来估计医生自我披露信息对患者决策的影响以及医生在线声誉在在线医疗社区中的权变作用。我们基于R语言程序设计了一个网络爬虫，从中国领先的在线医疗社区平台好大夫在线收集了2万多名医生的主页数据。医生信息披露的属性通过以下变量来衡量：情感倾向、信息量和语义主题多样性。
实证分析得出以下结果：（1）医生自我披露信息中的情感倾向与患者决策呈正相关；（2）信息过量和语义主题多样性都会给患者决策带来障碍；（3）当医生的在线声誉水平较高时，信息量和语义主题多样性的负面影响都会增强，而情感倾向的正面影响则不会增强。
本研究对于深入理解医生自我披露信息的影响具有重要意义，为信息披露、注意力有限容量模型和患者决策方面的文献做出了贡献。此外，本研究还为实践提供了启示。
