ABSTRACT

Online health consultation (OHC) provides an alternative mechanism of healthcare delivery, which could enhance healthcare efficiency, reduce cost, and solve healthcare inequalities. Understanding why patients decide to use these OHC platforms could yield strategic implications of actualizing OHC’s impacts. Given the high uncertainties caused by the lack of patient-physician offline interactions and the sensitivity of health information, we possess trust as the major mechanism of shifting patients’ adoption decisions. Accordingly, this study examines how patients-related, platform situational, and physician-based factors affect patients’ intention of adopting OHC by triggering trust relationships. We conducted a survey to empirically test our theoretical development. We employed the structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrapping approaches to estimate path coefficients and significance of the model. Our results demonstrate that patients’ Internet self-efficacy on verification, trust propensity, perceived informativeness, platform reputation, structural assurance, and perceived physician credibility triggers trust relationship, therefore improving patients’ OHC adoption. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

摘要

在线健康咨询（OHC）提供了另一种医疗保健提供机制，可以提高医疗保健效率，降低成本并解决医疗保健不平等现象。了解为什么患者决定使用这些OHC平台可能会产生实现OHC影响的战略意义。由于缺乏医患之间的离线互动以及对健康信息的敏感性造成的高度不确定性，我们拥有信任，这是改变患者采用决定的主要机制。因此，本研究探讨了患者相关因素，平台情况和基于医生的因素如何通过触发信任关系来影响患者采用OHC的意图。我们进行了一项调查，以实证检验我们的理论发展。我们采用了结构方程模型（SEM）和自举方法来估计路径系数和模型的重要性。我们的结果表明，患者在验证，信任倾向，感知的信息性，平台声誉，结构保证和感知的医生信誉方面的互联网自我效能可以触发信任关系，从而提高患者对OHC的采用率。讨论了理论和实践意义。