The Impact of Penetration Rate of Online Health Service on Service Quality and Price: Evidence from Online Health Communities

Online Health Community (OHC) can help to reduce patients medical expenses, improve doctors service quality, and provide a channel for doctor to earn extra money. Therefore, OHC is widely accepted by doctors and patients, and become a typical application scenario of internet plus. Using data from Haodf.com, the largest Chinese online health community, and the website of Beijing Health Planning Commission, we explore the influence of penetration rate of online health service on quality and price of doctors online consulting service. Moreover, we investigate how such effects differ across different types of hospitals. The results suggest that online penetration rate positively affects the quality of doctors services and negatively affects the online service price. In addition, the online penetration rate has a bigger impact on the consulting price of doctors in specialized hospitals than that of doctors in general hospitals.