The Development of Online Doctor Reviews in China: An Analysis of the Largest Online Doctor Review Website in China

Hao, Haijing

doi:10.2196/jmir.4365

Cited by 88 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…POC t is the past physician online contribution at time t [15,34]. DR t is the mean of doctor review ratings at time t [5,26]. CT t is a dummy variable for the clinic title, where chief and associate chief physicians are coded 1 and others are coded zero [5].…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…CT t is a dummy variable for the clinic title, where chief and associate chief physicians are coded 1 and others are coded zero [5]. HL t is a dummy variable, set to 1 if the physician is from a tertiary hospital and zero otherwise [5].…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…CITY t is also a dummy variable, taking the value 1 if the doctor comes from Beijing or Shanghai and zero otherwise [5]. In this study, all control variables are stock variables, which represent the online and offline status of physicians at time t. The definitions and measurements of all variables are reported in Table 1.…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This phenomenon has received the attention of many researchers, and several studies of the OHC have been conducted focusing on various issues, such as how online physician reviews have been used in different countries [2][3][4][5][6][7]; what are the differences between the traditional and online physician reviews [8]; and whether differences in medical specialty areas affect these reviews [5,9]. Nevertheless, in China, even though the OHC might help consumers look for a good physician, the queues at Chinese hospitals are legendary [10], which means that it is not easy to make an appointment with a physician.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The OHC is no longer merely a site for the public to share physician reviews; moreover, it has become a physician-patient communication platform in China. There have been many companies offering this type of service, among which the Good Doctor website is a typical example [5]. The Good Doctor website (www.haodf.com, "hao dai fu" means "good doctor" in Chinese) is the earliest online physician review website [13], in operation in China since 2006.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding a Nonlinear Causal Relationship Between Rewards and Physicians� Contributions in Online Health Care Communities: Longitudinal Study (Preprint)

Wang¹,

Chiu²,

Yu³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Background: The online health-care community (OHC) is not just a place for the public to share physician reviews or medical knowledge; it is also a physician-patient communication platform. The medical resources of developing countries are relatively inadequate, and the OHC is a potential solution to alleviate the phenomenon of long hospital queues and the lack of medical resources in rural areas. However, the success of the OHC depends on online contributions by physicians. Objective: The aim of this study is not only to understand physician online contribution behavior, but also to examine the helpfulness of incentive mechanisms. We addressed the following questions: (1) From which specialty area are physicians more likely to participate in OHC activities? (2) What are the factors affecting physician online contributions? (3) Do incentive mechanisms, including psychological and material rewards, result in differences of physician online contributions? (4) How can OHC managers exploit feasible incentive mechanisms to improve physician online contributions? Methods: We designed a longitudinal study involving a data sample in three waves. All data were collected from the Good Doctor website, which is the largest OHC in China. We first used descriptive statistics to investigate all of the physician online contribution behavior. Then multiple linear and quadratic regression models were applied to verify the causal relationship between rewards and physician online contribution. Results: Our sample includes 40,300 physicians from 3,607 different hospitals, 10 different major specialty areas, and 31 different provinces or municipalities. The average increments of physician online contribution scores in Gynecology-Obstetrics and Pediatrics specialty areas were 413.5 and 362.2, respectively, much higher than others. Based on the multiple quadratic regression model, we found that the coefficients of the control variables, past physician online contributions, doctor review rating, clinic title, hospital level, and city level, were 0.415, 0.189, -0.099, -0.106, and -0.143, respectively. For the psychological (material) rewards, the standardized coefficient of the main effect was 0.261 (0.688) and the standardized coefficient of the quadratic effect was -0.015 (-0.049). All estimates were statistically significantly at a 0.1% level. Conclusions: Our study discovered that the averages of physician online contribution were different in ten specialty areas. Physicians with more past physician online contribution, with higher review ratings, with lower clinic levels, not coming from tertiary hospitals, and not coming from big cities, were more willing to participate in OHC activities. To promote physician online contribution, it is necessary to establish an appropriate incentive mechanism including psychological and material rewards. Finally, our findings suggest two guidelines for designing a useful incentive mechanism to facilitate physician online contribution. First, material reward is more useful than psychological...

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