Abstract
Background: Little research has studied the peer effect of physicians and patients in online health communities (OHCs) simultaneously. The study investigates the impact of the focal physician’s peers (F-peers) on the focal physician (F-physician), and the impact of patients of the focal physician’s peers (F-P-patients) on the focal physician’s patients (F-patients). Moreover, based on brand extension and accessible–diagnosable theories, this study explores the moderating effects of the intensity of F-peers’ knowledge sharing behavior and department reputation. Methods: This study collects data of 3297 physicians and related patients from Haodf.com platform between January 2019 and December 2019. Both two-way fixed effect and panel negative binomial regression are adopted to quantify the effects. Results: Results show that the behavior of F-peers positively affects the behavior of the F-physician, while the behavior of F-P-patients positively affects the behavior of F-patients. Moreover, both the intensity of F-peers’ knowledge sharing behavior and department reputation have a compound moderating effect. Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature of peer effects by constructing the conceptual framework of different types of individual participation behaviors in OHCs. The findings offer practical guides for establishing an incentive mechanism and formulating peer incentives or competition strategies in OHCs.
Highlights
Aiming to fill this research gap, this study focuses on the peer effect of physicians in the same department and the peer effect of patients, by analyzing the impact of focal physician’s peers (F-peers) on the F-physician, and F-P-patients on F-patients
Based on the accessible–diagnosable and brand extension theories, we explore the impact of F-peers and F-P-patients participation behavior on the F-physician and F-patients participation behavior, and elaborate on a set of research hypotheses
We mainly explore the impact of F-peers’ knowledge sharing and the services evaluating of F-P-patients on the participation behavior of the F-physician and
Summary
With the rapid development of OHCs, it has become an important tool for people to discuss health problems, share and search health knowledge, diagnose and treat diseases, make appointments and register [1,2]. It alleviates the problem of “difficult and expensive medical treatment” for patients, and provides a new way of working for physicians without time and space constraints [3]. Methods: This study collects data of 3297 physicians and related patients from Haodf.com platform between January 2019 and December 2019 Both two-way fixed effect and panel negative binomial regression are adopted to quantify the effects. Results: Results show that the behavior of F-peers positively affects the behavior of the F-physician, while the behavior of F-P-patients positively affects the behavior of F-patients
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