Table 1.
Variables’ measurements.
Variable | Symbol, Description and Measurement | Mean | Std. | Min. | Max. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dependent variable | |||||
E-consultation choice | |||||
Patient quantity | Quantity–number of patients consulted a physician online in the last 6-months (logarithmic value). | 145.78 | 543.17 | 0 | 15,459 |
Patient satisfaction | Satisfied–the ratio of satisfied patients to all patients (Original data) | 0.11 | 0.15 | 0.04 | 0.21 |
Independent variable | |||||
Online reputation | |||||
Review volume | Volume–number of reviews for a particular physician (Logarithmic value). | 34.39 | 17.23 | 1 | 123 |
Rating score | Heat–voting heat for the physician, evaluated by patients (Ordinal) | 4.41 | 0.55 | 1 | 4.59 |
Offline reputation | |||||
Professional title | CTitle–physician clinical title (Dummy: 1–medical doctor/0–otherwise) | 0.91 | 0.49 | 0 | 1 |
Elite education | Education–physician graduated from top-50 medical school (Dummy: 1–yes/0–no) | 0.31 | 0.11 | 0 | 1 |
Tenure | Experience–physician experience (in years) (Logarithmic value) | 16.89 | 5.31 | 1 | 51 |
Board certification | Certification–physician board certification (Dummy: 1–yes/0–no) | 0.88 | 0.21 | 0 | 1 |
Online effort | |||||
Blogs | Blogs–the number of blogs initiated by a physician (Logarithmic value) | 3.31 | 21.2 | 0 | 27 |
Scientific articles | Articles–the number of articles published by a physician (Logarithmic value) | 0.12 | 10.11 | 0 | 47 |
Replies | Replies–the number of replies to patients by physician | 5.6 | 113.2 | 0 | 47 |
Reply length | Length–number of words in a reply (Logarithmic value) | 16.45 | 9.21 | 39.21 | 98.72 |
Moderator | |||||
Disease risk | Risk–measured as disease mortality (Dummy: 1–high-risk disease/0–otherwise) | 0.77 | 0.123 | 0 | 1 |
Control variables | |||||
City rank | Rank–city rank where the physician works. A scale of 1–3 is used, with 1 being the lowest and 3 the highest (Ordinal). | 2.55 | 0.04 | 1 | 3 |
Specialty expertise | Phy_Exp–the number of diseases that the physician is good at curing (Logarithmic value). | 52.41 | 31.12 | 1 | 13 |
New patients | New–whether the physician accepts new patients or not (Dummy: 1–yes/0–no). | 0.87 | 0.12 | 0 | 1 |