College of Management and Economy, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
Business School, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Oct 15;19(20):13293. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192013293.
(1) Background: Word-of-mouth (WOM) can influence patients' choice of doctors in online medical services (OMSs). Previous studies have explored the relationship between internal WOM in online healthcare communities (OHCs) and patients' choice of doctors. There is a lack of research on external WOM and position ranking in OMSs. (2) Methods: We develop an empirical model based on the data of 4435 doctors from a leading online healthcare community in China. We discuss the influence of internal and external WOM on patients' choice of doctors in OMSs, exploring the interaction between internal and external WOM and the moderation of doctor position ranking. (3) Results: Both internal and external WOM had a positive impact on patients' choice of doctors; there was a significant positive interaction between internal and third-party generated WOM, but the interaction between internal and relative-generated WOM, and the interaction between internal and doctor-generated WOM were both nonsignificant. The position ranking of doctors significantly enhanced the impact of internal WOM, whereas it weakened the impact of doctor recommendations on patients' choice of doctors. (4) The results emphasize the importance of the research on external WOM in OMSs, and suggest that the moderation of internal WOM may be related to the credibility and accessibility of external WOM, and the impact of doctor position ranking can be explained by information search costs.
(1)背景:口碑(WOM)可以影响患者在在线医疗服务(OMS)中选择医生。先前的研究已经探讨了在线医疗社区(OHC)中的内部 WOM 与患者选择医生之间的关系。但是,关于 OMS 中的外部 WOM 和职位排名的研究还很少。(2)方法:我们基于中国领先的在线医疗社区中的 4435 位医生的数据,建立了一个实证模型。我们讨论了内部和外部 WOM 对 OMS 中患者选择医生的影响,探讨了内部和外部 WOM 之间的相互作用以及医生职位排名的调节作用。(3)结果:内部和外部 WOM 都对患者选择医生有积极影响;内部和第三方生成的 WOM 之间存在显著的正相互作用,但内部和相对生成的 WOM 之间的相互作用以及内部和医生生成的 WOM 之间的相互作用均不显著。医生的职位排名显著增强了内部 WOM 的影响,而削弱了医生推荐对患者选择医生的影响。(4)结果强调了 OMS 中外部 WOM 研究的重要性,并表明内部 WOM 的调节可能与外部 WOM 的可信度和可及性有关,而医生职位排名的影响可以通过信息搜索成本来解释。