Impact of the Price of Gifts From Patients on Physicians’ Service Quality in Online Consultations: Empirical Study Based on Social Exchange Theory

Wang, Yanan; Wu, Hong; Xia, Chenxi; Lu, Naiji

doi:10.2196/15685

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our findings on the direct effects of gifts are similar to those of a few prior studies (e.g., Peng et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). For example, these studies also find a positive link between gifts from patients and doctors' emotional support.…”

Section: Managerial Implications and Future Research Directionssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…They find that after receiving gifts, doctors provide more detailed responses to giftgivers. Wang et al (2020) also find a positive link between gifts and doctors' informational and emotional support for the gift-givers. Jing et al (2019) similarly find that monetary incentives are positively associated with doctors' prosocial behavior (i.e., providing free consultation).…”

Section: Gifts From Patients In Online Settingsmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…Wang et al. (2020) also find a positive link between gifts and doctors' informational and emotional support for the gift‐givers. Jing et al.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Quid pro quo in online medical consultation? Investigating the effects of small monetary gifts from patients

Zhao

Liu

Guo

et al. 2022

Production and Operations Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent years have seen robust growth in online medical consultation platforms. These platforms allow patients to access various healthcare services provided by doctors (e.g., health assessment, diagnosis, consultation, and supervision). In China, many such platforms allow patients to give small monetary gifts to doctors as an expression of gratitude. The implicit assumption is that expensive gifts influence doctors' medical service and generate conflicts of interest but small gifts do not. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. In order to fill this gap in the literature, our study investigates whether small gifts from patients impact the quality of service provided to the gift-givers (i.e., direct effect) and the nongivers (i.e., spillover effect). We examine three aspects of online medical service quality: (i) patient wait time, (ii) the amount of information in doctors' responses, and (iii) the degree of emotional support in doctors' responses. We find that despite the gifts' negligible monetary value, doctors who receive gifts do reciprocate to the gift-givers by providing them with more timely responses and greater emotional support. Furthermore, after receiving the small gifts, doctors may be slower in responding to nongivers and offer them less emotional support. We also investigate whether these effects (both direct and spillover effects) vary with doctors' backgrounds, including their professional experience and geographic location. Our findings have both theoretical and practical implications for patients, online medical consultation platforms, and healthcare policy makers.

show abstract

Section: Managerial Implications and Future Research Directionssupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Gifts From Patients In Online Settingsmentioning

confidence: 71%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Quid pro quo in online medical consultation? Investigating the effects of small monetary gifts from patients

Zhao

Liu

Guo

et al. 2022

Production and Operations Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whereas economic exchanges tend to be quid pro quo and require active monitoring [29], social exchange tends to be open-ended, with the terms of exchange not being precisely specified [30]. Social exchange theory is among the most influential conceptual paradigms for understanding communication between internet users and consumption behaviors, including self-disclosure on microblogging sites [31], gifting through social network services [30], contributing to online professional communities [32], online purchasing intentions [33], online service quality [34], and online customer retention [35].…”

Section: Social Exchange Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

One Good Turn Deserves Another: Antecedents of Online Karaoke Paid Gift-Sending from Social Exchange Perspectives

Jia

2021

JTAER

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the dynamics of online karaoke virtual gift sending helps maximize its utility for all participants, including viewers, broadcasters, and platforms. However, extant paid gift-sending studies lack an integrated theoretical explanation of its incentives as well as practical implications that can facilitate the quantifiable implementation of service improvement. This study has successfully uncovered the motivation of paid gift-sending in an online karaoke context from a social exchange perspective using social exchange theory. By observing the activities of 11,640 online karaoke users over one year, it was discovered that their gift-sending behaviors adhere to the patterns of more-follower-more-gift-sending and receive-more-send-more. Moreover, such patterns are more pronounced for collaborative users and are accentuated over time. Theoretically, this study extends the scope of social commerce studies from B2C to C2C scenarios with more complicated interpersonal dynamics. Meanwhile, managers are advised to encourage following, stimulate collaboration, inject additional virtual gifts into the “market”, and retain their customers to generate long-term profits.

show abstract

“…On the other hand, patient behavior can also exert an influence on physicians. Whether or not patients choose to ask for a consultation is also used as an indicator to measure physician services, which will further motivate physicians to improve the quality of their services [ 32 ]. Therefore, this paper will provide some assistance to physicians based on the analysis of patient behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Research Based on Online Medical Platform: The Influence of Strong and Weak Ties Information on Patients’ Consultation Behavior

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As an indispensable part of contemporary medical services, Internet-based medical platforms can provide patients with a full range of multi-disciplinary and multi-modal treatment services. Along with the emergence of many healthcare influencers and the increasing connection between online and offline consultations, the operation of individual physicians and their teams on Internet-based medical platforms has started to attract a lot of attention. The purpose of this paper is to, based on an Internet platform, study how the information on physicians’ homepages influences patients’ consultation behavior, so as to provide suggestions for the construction of physicians’ personal websites. We distinguish variables into strong- and weak-ties types, dependent on whether deep social interactions between physicians and patients have happened. If there exist further social interactions, we define the variable as the “strong ties” type, otherwise, “weak ties”. The patients’ consultation behavior will be expressed as the volume of online consultation, i.e., the number of patients. We obtained the strong and weak ties information of each physician based on EWM (entropy weight method), so as to establish a regression model with explained variable, i.e., the number of patients, and three explanatory variables, i.e., the strong and weak ties information, and their interaction term. The estimation results verified our hypotheses and proved to be robust. It showed that both strong and weak ties information can positively influence patients’ consultation behavior, and the influence of weak ties information is greater. Regarding the positive influence of strong and weak ties, we found a trade off effect between them. Based on the results, we finalize with some suggestions on how to improve a physician’s online medical consultation volume.

show abstract

Impact of the Price of Gifts From Patients on Physicians’ Service Quality in Online Consultations: Empirical Study Based on Social Exchange Theory

Cited by 15 publications

References 52 publications

Quid pro quo in online medical consultation? Investigating the effects of small monetary gifts from patients

Quid pro quo in online medical consultation? Investigating the effects of small monetary gifts from patients

One Good Turn Deserves Another: Antecedents of Online Karaoke Paid Gift-Sending from Social Exchange Perspectives

A Research Based on Online Medical Platform: The Influence of Strong and Weak Ties Information on Patients’ Consultation Behavior

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About