Background In online medical consulting platforms, physicians can get both economic and social returns by offering online medical services, such as answering questions or sharing health care knowledge with patients. Physicians’ online prosocial behavior could bring many benefits to the health care industry. Monetary incentives could encourage physicians to engage more in online medical communities. However, little research has studied the impact of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and the heterogeneity of this effect. Objective This study aims to explore the effects of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and investigate the moderation effects of self-recognition and recognition from others of physician competence. Methods This study was a fixed-effect specification-regression model based on a difference-in-differences design with robust standard errors clustered at the physician level using monthly panel data. It included 26,543 physicians in 3851 hospitals over 133 months (November 2006-December 2017) from a leading online health care platform in China. We used the pricing strategy of physicians and satisfaction levels to measure their own and patients’ degree of recognition, respectively. Physicians’ prosocial behavior was measured by free services offered. Results The introduction of monetary incentives had a positive effect on physician prosocial behavior (β=1.057, P<.01). Higher self-recognition and others’ recognition level of physician competence increased this promotion effect (γ=0.275, P<.01 and γ=0.325, P<.01). Conclusions This study explored the positive effect of the introduction of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior. We found this effect was enhanced for physicians with a high level of self-recognition and others’ recognition of their competence. We provide evidence of the effect of monetary incentives on physicians’ prosocial behaviors in the telemedicine markets and insight for relevant stakeholders into how to design an effective incentive mechanism to improve physicians’ prosocial engagements.

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Commercial hosts are becoming increasingly common in peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation sharing. Yet the interplay between commercial and individual hosts has been unclear. This study investigates the effect of properties managed by commercial hosts on the individual hosts in the neighborhood. Specifically, we hypothesize that an increase in commercial properties, which have competitive advantages, would penetrate neighborhood markets and cannibalize the online popularity of individual properties. We test these hypotheses using a large-scale, longitudinal data set collected from a leading P2P accommodation-sharing platform in Beijing. The findings show that an increase in commercial properties is associated with a decline in the popularity of individual properties in the neighborhood. However, the negative effect of commercial properties is weakened when there is a higher price difference between the two ownership types and a higher density of tourist attractions. The implications for service operations and strategies for P2P accommodation-sharing businesses are discussed.

BACKGROUND In online medical consulting platforms, physicians can get both economic and social returns by offering online medical services, such as answering questions or sharing health care knowledge with patients. Physicians’ online prosocial behavior could bring many benefits to the health care industry. Monetary incentives could encourage physicians to engage more in online medical communities. However, little research has studied the impact of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and the heterogeneity of this effect. OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore the effects of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior and investigate the moderation effects of self-recognition and recognition from others of physician competence. METHODS This study was a fixed-effect specification-regression model based on a difference-in-differences design with robust standard errors clustered at the physician level using monthly panel data. It included 26,543 physicians in 3851 hospitals over 133 months (November 2006-December 2017) from a leading online health care platform in China. We used the pricing strategy of physicians and satisfaction levels to measure their own and patients’ degree of recognition, respectively. Physicians’ prosocial behavior was measured by free services offered. RESULTS The introduction of monetary incentives had a positive effect on physician prosocial behavior (β=1.057, P<.01). Higher self-recognition and others’ recognition level of physician competence increased this promotion effect (γ=0.275, P<.01 and γ=0.325, P<.01). CONCLUSIONS This study explored the positive effect of the introduction of monetary incentives on physician prosocial behavior. We found this effect was enhanced for physicians with a high level of self-recognition and others’ recognition of their competence. We provide evidence of the effect of monetary incentives on physicians’ prosocial behaviors in the telemedicine markets and insight for relevant stakeholders into how to design an effective incentive mechanism to improve physicians’ prosocial engagements.