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The Impacts of Patients’ Gift Giving Behavior on Physicians’ Service Quality

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Smart Health (ICSH 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10347))

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Abstract

The Online health community (OHC) provides convenience and benefits. Simultaneously, it also generates informal social moral problems regarding payment. However, few studies have explored the physicians’ service delivery from the patients’ perspective. Using unique interaction data between doctors and patients from an online health consultation community, we empirically examined how patients’ gift giving behavior influences physicians’ service delivery, and how this influence is being moderated by physicians’ gift receiving ratio and social morality, using a difference-in-difference model. We find that the giving of gifts by patients has a positive impact on the physicians’ service quality. Furthermore, this effect is significantly moderated by the physicians’ gift receiving ratio and social morality. We discuss the implications of these findings for patients consulting in OHCs and for OHC designers.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, eHealth Research Institute, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Wei Zhao, Xitong Guo, Tianshi Wu & Jingxuan Geng

Authors
  1. Wei Zhao
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  2. Xitong Guo
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  3. Tianshi Wu
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  4. Jingxuan Geng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xitong Guo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Daniel Dajun Zeng

  3. Department of Management Information System, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Elena Karahanna

  4. University of Texas, Richardson, Texas, USA

    Indranil Bardhan

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Zhao, W., Guo, X., Wu, T., Geng, J. (2017). The Impacts of Patients’ Gift Giving Behavior on Physicians’ Service Quality. In: Chen, H., Zeng, D., Karahanna, E., Bardhan, I. (eds) Smart Health. ICSH 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10347. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67964-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67964-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67963-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67964-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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