ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021
Exploring the Impact of Linguistic Signals Transmission on Patients' Health Consultation Choice: Web Mining of Online Reviews.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Extending Signaling Theory in Online Health Communities to Address Medical Information Asymmetry: Systematic Review With Narrative Synthesis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Examining the Supports and Advice That Women With Intimate Partner Violence Experience Received in Online Health Communities: Text Mining Approach.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- The Roles of Trust and Its Antecedent Variables in Healthcare Consumers' Acceptance of Online Medical Consultation during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Understanding Physicians' Motivation to Provide Healthcare Service Online in the Digital Age.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Internal or External Word-of-Mouth (WOM), Why Do Patients Choose Doctors on Online Medical Services (OMSs) Single Platform in China?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Examining the Determinants of Patient Perception of Physician Review Helpfulness across Different Disease Severities: A Machine Learning Approach.Computational intelligence and neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPatients face difficulties identifying appropriate physicians owing to the sizeable quantity and uneven quality of information in physician rating websites. Therefore, an increasing dependence of consumers on online platforms as a source of information for decision-making has given rise to the need for further research into the quality of information in the form of online physician reviews (OPRs).
methodsDrawing on the signaling theory, this study develops a theoretical model to examine how linguistic signals (affective signals and informative signals) in physician rating websites affect consumers' decision making. The hypotheses are tested using 5521 physicians' six-month data drawn from two leading health rating platforms in the U.S (i.e., Healthgrades.com and Vitals.com) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sentic computing-based sentiment analysis framework is used to implicitly analyze patients' opinions regarding their treatment choice.
resultsThe results indicate that negative sentiment, review readability, review depth, review spelling, and information helpfulness play a significant role in inducing patients' decision-making. The influence of negative sentiment, review depth on patients' treatment choice was indirectly mediated by information helpfulness.
conclusionsThis paper is a first step toward the understanding of the linguistic characteristics of information relating to the patient experience, particularly the emerging field of online health behavior and signaling theory. It is also the first effort to our knowledge that employs sentic computing-based sentiment analysis in this context and provides implications for practice.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.