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

IF 2.9 2区医学 Q2 PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH Patient Education and Counseling Pub Date : 2025-02-07 DOI:10.1016/j.pec.2025.108699

Xinyi Lu , Minwei Lin , Yinsheng Zhang , Haiyan Wang

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引用次数: 0

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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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.