Table 1.

Variable measurements and sources.

Code	Variable	Measurements	Source
PRICE	Consulting price	The listed price of the online health care consulting service provided by doctors	Haodf
WAGE	Provincial wage level	The provincial average currency wage of employees in 2017	Wind Economic Database [60]
WVOL	Doctor’s eWOMa volume	The number of reviews provided by patients indicating the doctor’s professional ability on the website	Haodf
WVAL	Doctor’s eWOM valence	Mean of the overall ratings in patients’ reviews of the doctor	Haodf
PSALE	Past online sales	Number of patients who had paid for the doctor’s online health care service	Haodf
CL	Clinic title	Clinic title of the doctor, dummy variable: CL=1 if the doctor’s position was chief physician or associate chief physician; 0 otherwise	Haodf
HL	Hospital level	The level of hospital to which the doctor was affiliated, dummy variable: HL=1 if the doctor was from a tertiary hospital; 0 otherwise	Haodf
WORD	Length of doctor’s profile	Number of words in the doctor’s personal profile	Haodf
TENURE	Tenure with Haodf	The doctor’s tenure with the Haodf website (in days), calculated based on the data download date minus the doctor’s registration date on the website	Haodf
LCT	Length of consulting time	The listed length of one occasion of the consulting service (in minutes) provided by doctors	Haodf
DIV	Division	The doctor’s division as categorized by the website, including internal medicine, surgery, gynecology/obstetrics, pediatrics, orthopedics, ophthalmology, oral health, cancer, Chinese medicine, and others	Haodf

^aeWOM: electronic word of mouth.