Subject: Empirical analysis methods from online data: applications to healthcare studies
Date: 2019-05-17 8:30-10:00
Address: 308
Dr. Zhou Junjie, Associate Professor, Business School, Shantou University. Dr. Zhou earned his Ph.D. degree in Renmin University of China and now works in Shantou University. His research interests include e-healthcare, smart senior care, and users’ online behaviors. His work recently has been published in the journals such as Internet Research, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, Australasian Journal on Ageing, and major IS conference proceedings such as PACIS and AMCIS.
CONTENT:
While research on intangible goods and services in online markets, specifically health-related services, has started growing and signaling theory is now being applied to understand information asymmetry in these environments, we still know relatively little about how buyers mitigate information asymmetry in online markets for healthcare, specifically mental healthcare. This study aims to address the research question: How does mental healthcare counselors’ reputational signaling affect clients’ preferences in online markets for mental healthcare services? We incorporate two types of reputational signaling, propose four hypotheses, and test them using a panel dataset of 493 observations of 275 mental healthcare providers in an OMMH in China. We find that each type of signal is positively associated with clients’ preference for a counselor. Moreover, we find evidence of a substitution effect between reputational attributes and reputational behavior such that the positive effects of signals of both technical competence and counseling style are weakened when the counselor sends stronger signals of responsiveness to client questions.
