ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2020
Impact of the Price of Gifts From Patients on Physicians' Service Quality in Online Consultations: Empirical Study Based on Social Exchange Theory.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relationship Between Physician Self-Disclosure and Patient Acquisition in Digital Health Markets: Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Observational
- The Impact of Perceived Quality on Patients' Adoption and Usage of Online Health Consultations: An Empirical Study Based on Trust Theory.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Offline visit intention of online patients: the Grice's maxims and patient involvement.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Article
- Comparing the Quality of Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine Dominated and Delivered by Public and Private Sector Platforms in China: Standardized Patient Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- A Systematic Review of Online Medical Consultation Research.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Consulting doctors online after offline treatment: investigating the effects of online information on patients' effective use of online follow-up services.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Perceived benefits, costs, and relationships on provincial doctors' inclination to participate in urban-rural medical consortia in Central China: a social exchange theory perspective.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Physicians' Online Writing Language Style and Patient Satisfaction: The Mediator of Depth of Physician-Patient Interactions.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A Research Based on Online Medical Platform: The Influence of Strong and Weak Ties Information on Patients' Consultation Behavior.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Why should I consult? The impact of social support on patient consultation in online healthcare communities.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Factors influencing online orthopedic doctor-patient consultations.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2021Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGift giving from patients to physicians, which is prohibited in traditional clinical settings in China, has been found to occur in online health communities. However, there is debate on the validity of online gifts since physicians gain an economic benefit. Moreover, the potential impact of these gifts, particularly with respect to the financial value of the gift, on the online consultation service quality remains unexplored.
objectiveThe aim of this study was to explore the impact of gift price on the quality of physicians' online consultation service. Insight into this impact is expected to help resolve existing debate on the appropriateness of the gift-giving practice in online consultations.
methodsA dataset of 141 physicians and 4249 physician-patient interactions was collected from the Good Physician Online website, which is the largest online consultation platform in China. Based on social exchange theory, we investigated how gift price affects the quality of physicians' online consultation service and how this impact changes according to the physician's service price and number of all gifts received. Manual annotation was used to identify the information support paragraphs and emotional support paragraphs in the answers of physicians. The quality of the information support paragraphs, rather than the complete answer, was used to test the robustness of our model.
resultsGift price had a positive impact on the quality of physicians' online consultation service (β=4.941, P<.01). This impact was negatively mediated by both the physician's service price (β=-9.245, P<.001) and the total number of gifts they received (β=-5.080, P<.001).
conclusionsGift price has a positive impact on physicians' online behavior, although the impact varies among physicians.
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