Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 18, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 21, 2019 - Mar 28, 2019
Date Accepted: May 10, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Predictors of patients’ intention to interact with doctors on online health communities in China
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online health communities provide opportunities for doctors and patients interact with each other and change the traditional communication mode between doctors and patients. However, little is known about the predictors of patients’ intention to interact with doctors on online health communities in China.
Objective:
The purpose of this study is to investigate what are the predictors of patients’ intention to interact with doctors on online health communities in China.
Methods:
Based on two-factor theory and service convenience theory, we propose that the attributes of online health communities including ease of use and perceived synchronicity influence patients’ intention to interact through convenience of online health communities, while the attributes of physical health facilities like inaccessibility and discontinuity affect patients’ intention to interact through inconvenience of physical health facilities. We employed the survey method to validate our hypothesized relationships. Through developing the measurement instruments, we collected 334 valid answers from online health community users and utilized partial least square to analyze the data.
Results:
Ease of use (t=2.924, P <0.01) and perceived synchronicity (t=2.353, P <0.05) were found to influence convenience of online health communities significantly, while inaccessibility (t=3.189, P <0.01) and discontinuity (t=3.149, P <0.01) were found to impact inconvenience of physical health facilities significantly. Meanwhile, both convenience of online health communities (t=2.353, P <0.05) and inconvenience of physical health facilities (t=2.787, P <0.01) were found to affect patients’ intention to interact with doctors on online health communities significantly. Therefore, all the proposed hypotheses were supported.
Conclusions:
Through including factors from both online health communities and physical health facilities, we can understand patients’ intention to interact comprehensively. This study, not only contribute to literature of doctor-patient interaction and online health platforms, but also provide implications to promote doctor-patients interaction online and offline.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.