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The influence of patient-generated reviews and doctor-patient relationship on online consultations in China

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Abstract

Online reviews are increasingly being used and researched by people worldwide. Compared with previous studies on traditional products or services, research focused on online health communities (OHCs) is still insufficient. Thus, based on cue diagnosticity theory, this research concentrates on combining two mainstream studies by incorporating the patient-generated review with the unique characteristics of online medical services–the doctor-patient relationship–to study the information processing issues in choosing consultations. We clawed the dataset, including 2865 doctors related to 152,864 patient-generated reviews and information, from the GoodDoctor website. We then employed a negative binomial regression to test our hypotheses. Interestingly, we found that the effects of review length and review volume on doctors’ consultations can be negatively moderated by the doctor-patient relationship. Our findings can serve patients, doctors, platform managers, and others to optimize the application of patients’ information processing when choosing consultations.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are highly grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, 18, Xueyuan St., 310018, Hangzhou, China

    Yajie Hu & Huiwen Zhou

  2. School of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, 18, Xueyuan St., 310018, Hangzhou, China

    Yuangao Chen, Jianrong Yao & Jiangwu Su

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  1. Yajie Hu
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Hu, Y., Zhou, H., Chen, Y. et al. The influence of patient-generated reviews and doctor-patient relationship on online consultations in China. Electron Commer Res 23, 1115–1141 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-021-09506-8

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