“What can I trust”: Exploring impact of dual-channel service review quality on patients’ online healthcare choices

IF 3.1 2区医学 Q2 PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH Patient Education and Counseling Pub Date : 2025-05-01 Epub Date: 2025-02-07 DOI:10.1016/j.pec.2025.108699

Xinyi Lu , Minwei Lin , Yinsheng Zhang , Haiyan Wang

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Abstract

Objective

Online reviews are crucial for consumer decision-making, especially in online health communities (OHCs), where patients rely on reviews of physicians’ services. This study aims to evaluate the quality of both offline and online service reviews and examine the impact of review quality on patients’ online choices.

Methods

This study developed models to evaluate the quality of dual-channel service reviews from OHCs. Based on signaling theory, we investigated how review quality affected patients’ online choices. Data, including online and offline reviews of 1958 physicians, were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression to test the hypotheses.

Results

Dual-channel service review quality positively affected patients’ online choices, with a negative synergistic effect between offline and online review quality. Physician engagement positively moderated the effect of offline review quality on patients’ online choices.

Conclusions

This study makes valuable theoretical contributions by providing models for evaluating dual-channel review quality and insights into patients’ decision-making in OHCs.

Practice Implications

Healthcare platforms can use these models to evaluate reviews and promote high-quality reviews. Physicians can balance their efforts between offline and online services. Patients are encouraged to consider reviews from both channels and to provide authentic feedback to enhance transparency and trust.

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“我可以信任什么”：探索双渠道服务评论质量对患者在线医疗选择的影响

目的在线评论对消费者决策至关重要，特别是在在线健康社区（OHCs）中，患者依赖于对医生服务的评论。本研究旨在评估离线和在线服务评论的质量，并检查评论质量对患者在线选择的影响。方法建立双通道服务评价的评价模型。基于信号理论，我们研究了评论质量如何影响患者的在线选择。数据，包括对1958名医生的在线和离线评论，使用普通最小二乘回归来检验假设。结果双通道服务评价质量正向影响患者的线上选择，而线下评价质量与线上评价质量之间存在负协同效应。医生参与正调节了线下评论质量对患者在线选择的影响。结论本研究提供了评估双通道评价质量的模型，并为OHCs患者的决策提供了有价值的理论贡献。实践意义医疗保健平台可以使用这些模型来评估评论并促进高质量的评论。医生可以平衡他们在线下和在线服务之间的努力。鼓励患者考虑来自两个渠道的评论，并提供真实的反馈，以提高透明度和信任。

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来源期刊

Patient Education and Counseling 医学-公共卫生、环境卫生与职业卫生

CiteScore

5.60

自引率

11.40%

发文量

384

审稿时长

46 days

期刊介绍： Patient Education and Counseling is an interdisciplinary, international journal for patient education and health promotion researchers, managers and clinicians. The journal seeks to explore and elucidate the educational, counseling and communication models in health care. Its aim is to provide a forum for fundamental as well as applied research, and to promote the study of organizational issues involved with the delivery of patient education, counseling, health promotion services and training models in improving communication between providers and patients.