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This study aims to investigate the external and internal stimuli, which affect the organismic experiences of the users and thereby influence their response in terms of behavioral intention toward the use of online doctor consultation platforms.

The study operationalized the stimulus–organism–response framework for the research model and surveyed 357 users in India who had experienced online doctor consultation platforms. The analysis has been done using the structural equation modeling approach.

The authors’ main results indicate the following key points. One, perceived usefulness, social influence, health anxiety, offline consultation habit and perceived technology usage risk are significant predictors of perceived value. In contrast, perceived ubiquity is identified to be an insignificant predictor of perceived value. Second, social influence and perceived technology usage risk have significant influence on trust. However, perceived usefulness is not a significant predictor of trust.

This study contributes to the theory by integrating technology-oriented factors with behavioral attributes for determining the behavioral intention of users toward the online doctor consultation platforms.

The managerial contributions of this study involve highlighting those technology-oriented and behavioral elements, which can be targeted to attract more users toward these platforms.

This is an original study that has looked beyond the role of technology-oriented factors in influencing the perceived value and trust elements while investigating the behavioral intention among the users toward the online doctor consultation platforms.

Online trust is a key factor for successful online transactions. To some extent, online health consultation can be considered an online transaction. Owing to the unique physician–patient relationship, patients' choice of physicians within an online health consultation setting may not only be based on rational judgments but also considerably affected by their feelings. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore which physicians' attributes affect patients' cognitive and affective trust in physicians, as well as how these two variables and their association affect patients' willingness to choose.

Based on the broad conceptual framework of online trust, this paper proposed a set of hypotheses that were tested through analyzing survey data using structural equation modeling techniques.

Results showed that physicians' ability had a significant positive influence on patients' cognitive trust in the physician; physicians' integrity and benevolence had a significant positive influence on patients' affective trust in the physician; cognitive and affective trust had a significant positive impact on patients' willingness to choose and there were significant positive interactions between affective and cognitive trust.

This study theoretically enriches the generic model of online trust. From the practical perspective, it will provide physicians working in online health consultation platforms and relevant practitioners with baseline information on the topic and advice for decision-making toward service enhancement and clientele improvements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of disease risk in terms of the major signals (i.e. status, reputation and self-representation) on the e-consultation platforms.

In this study, the proposed research hypotheses are tested using the transaction data collected from xywy.com (in Need of Therapy). In fact, xywy.com is one the leading e-consultation service websites in China that provides a platform for the interactions between the physicians and patients (Yu et al., 2016; Peng et al., 2015). Generally speaking, it has all the needed design elements and in other words, a standard e-consultation website should have such items/components as physician homepage, physician review, free consultation, paid consultation and recommendation systems.

The obtained results reveal that all attributes including status, reputation and self-representation have a positive impact on physician’s online order volume. Moreover, there is a positive moderating effect of disease risk onto the online reputation, indicating a higher effect exists for the diseases with high risk. However, the effect of offline status and online self-representation is not moderated by the disease risk, indicating market signals (online reputation) may have a stronger predictive power than seller signals (offline status and online self- representation), and therefore market signals are more effective when/if the disease risk is high.

E-consultation has gradually become a significant trend to provide the healthcare services, in the emerging economy such as China because of shortage of medical resources but having an adequate access in internet usage. The impacts of signals on the health care market have been validated by previous studies. However, the research focusing on the moderating effect of signaling environment in the health care industry is still lacking. As a result, the value of this research helps to bridge the aforementioned research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the patients’ intentions to visit doctors face-to-face for consultations from the perspective of online doctor–patient interaction. Justice theory, SERVQUAL and the halo effect are integrated to develop a research model based on the performance-evaluation-outcome framework. The authors hypothesize that perceived justice and service quality are the significant factors in reflecting the performance of online doctor–patient interaction, which influences patient satisfaction evaluation and online and offline behavioral intentions.

The study conducted an online survey to collect data. Patients on a healthcare consulting website were invited to participate in the survey. The research model and hypotheses were tested with 254 collected data from patients and analyzed using the partial least squares method.

The results show that perceived justice and service quality have a positive effect on patient satisfaction, and satisfaction and the intention of online consultation have a positive effect on the intention of face-to-face consultation.

This study offers suggestions on how doctors interact with patients and build their brand image. The findings also offer effective insights into improving doctors’ online services to retain patients and even encourage patients to go to clinics.

Online health consultation is one of the most popular online health services and is growing quickly. After patients consult online doctors, they are able to visit their doctors in person for further diagnosis and treatment if they have the need. This study investigates how patients’ online interactive experience influences their offline behavioral intentions, which are different from most of the past literature on eHealth.

Doctor–medical institution collaboration (DMIC) services are an emerging service mode in focal online health communities (OHCs). This new service mode is anticipated to affect user satisfaction and doctors' engagement behaviors. However, whether and how DMIC occurs is still ambiguous because the topic is rarely examined. To bridge this gap, this study explores doctors' participation in DMIC services and its effects on their online performance, as well as its effect on patients' evaluation of them on OHC platforms.

The authors propose hypotheses based on structural holes theory. A unique dataset obtained from one of the most popular OHCs in China is used to test the hypotheses, and difference-in-differences estimation is adopted to test the causality of the relationship.

The results demonstrate that providing DMIC services improves doctors' online consultation performance and patients' evaluations of them but has no significant effect on doctors' knowledge-sharing performance on OHC platforms. Doctors' knowledge-sharing performance and consultation performance mediate the relationship between participation in DMIC services and patients' evaluation of doctors. Regarding doctors' participation in DMIC services, its impact on doctors' consultation performance and patients' evaluation of them is weaker for doctors with higher professional titles than for doctors with lower professional titles.

The findings clarify the value creation mechanisms of online collaboration between doctors and medical institutions and thereafter facilitate doctors' participation in DMIC services and enhance the sustainable development of OHCs.

The purpose of this research paper is to explore the determinants of patients' service choices between telephone consultation and text consultation in online health communities (OHCs).

This study utilized an empirical model based on the elaboration likelihood model and examined the effect of information, regarding service quality (the central route) and service price (the peripheral route), using online health consultation data from one of the largest OHCs in China.

The logistic regression results indicated that both physician- and patient-generated information can influence the patients' service choices; service price signals will lead patients to cheaper options. However, individual motivations, disease risk and consulting experience change a patients' information processing regarding central and peripheral cues.

Previous researchers have investigated the mechanism of patient behavior in OHCs; however, the researchers have not focused on the patients' choices regarding the multiple health services provided in OHCs. The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for future researchers, OHC designers and physicians.

Technology has revolutionized the delivery of health-care services, with e-consultations becoming popular mode of service delivery, especially during the pandemic. Extant research has examined the adoption of e-health consultation services, with little attention paid to examine the switching behavior. This study aims to identify factors affecting patients’ intentions to switch from conventional mode i.e. visiting hospitals/clinics to e-health consultations.

To understand this we use the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework and integrate variables from status quo bias framework to the model. A cross-section research design was used, which rendered 413 valid responses which were obtained from the patients visiting a traditional hospital setup. The data was analyzed using partial least square – structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.0.

Findings suggest that push effects (inconvenience and perceived risk), pull effects (opportunity for alternatives and ubiquitous care), mooring effects (trust) and inertia significantly influence patients’ switching intentions from visiting hospitals/clinics to e-health consultations. Further, habit and switching cost positively influence inertia.

This study shall enable online health-care service providers and practitioners to understand patients’ intentions to switch to online health platforms and accordingly develop related marketing strategies, services and policies to encourage them to switch to the new offerings.

The current study enriches the previous research on e-health services by applying and extending PPM framework as the base model and showing its efficiency in predicting individuals switching intentions in the context of emerging economies. This study bridges the gap by focusing on switching behavior in context of health services.

This paper aims to identify consumers' health information consultation patterns by analyzing information sources to better understand consumers' health information needs and behavior in the context of multisource health information.

Haodaifu Online, an online health consultation (OHC) website in China, was used as a research data source, and 20,000 consultation cases were collected from the website with Python. After screening and cleaning, 1,601 consultation cases were included in this study. A content analysis-based mixed-methods research approach was applied to analyze these cases.

The results indicate that with the participation of OHC, there are 15 patterns of consumer health information consultation. Besides OHC, health information sources reported by consumers included medical institutions family/friends and the Internet. Consumers consult on a wide range of health issues including surgical conditions obstetrical and gynecological conditions and other 20 subjects. Consumers have multiple information needs when using OHC: getting prescriptions, diagnosing diseases, making appointments, understanding illnesses, confirming diagnoses and reviewing costs. Through further analysis it was found that consumers’ health information consultation patterns were also significantly different in health issues and health information needs.

This study broadens one’s understanding of consumer health information behavior, which contributes to the field of health information behavior, and also provides insight for OHC stakeholders to improve their services.

The advent of online live streaming platforms (OLSPs) and online health communities (OHCs) has expedited the integration of traditional medical services with Internet new media technology. Since the practice of physicians conducting live streaming is a relatively new phenomenon, the potential cross-platform effects of such physicians’ live streaming have not received adequate attention.

This study collected data from 616 physicians specializing in cardiology, obstetrics and gynecology and neurology between April and November 2022 on Live.Baidu.com and WeDoctor.com. It constructed a panel data set comprising a total of 4,928 observations over an 8-month period and validated the model using empirical analysis with the fixed-effects method.

We find evidence of cross-platform influence in online healthcare. Physicians’ live streaming behavior (whether live or not and the heat of their streams) on OLSPs positively impacts both their consultation and reputation on OHCs. Additionally, physicians’ ability positively moderates the relationships between live streaming heat and their performance (in terms of consultation volume and reputation) on OHCs. However, ability does not moderate the relationship between physicians’ live streaming status (live or not) and their performance (in terms of consultation and reputation) on OHCs. Furthermore, the attractive appearance of the physicians also significantly moderates the impact in a positive way.

This is one of the pioneering studies on physicians’ live streaming. The study offers vital guidance for physicians and patients utilizing dual platforms and holds significant reference value for platform operators (such as OLSPs and OHCs) aiming to optimize platform operations and for the government in policy formulation and industry regulation.

The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.

Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.

This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.