The effect of physicians’ value-added services on patients’ consulting intention in online health communities

Purpose With growing attention to physician-patient interactions in online health communities, this study introduces the concept of physicians’ value-added services and classifies them into free and paid types. Addressing a gap in prior research that largely overlooks paid value-added services and their distinctions from free ones, this paper examines how these two types differently influence patients’ consulting intention. Design/methodology/approach Secondary data and five experiments were conducted to examine the effect of physicians’ value-added services on patients’ consulting intention. Findings Results indicate that physicians’ free (vs paid) value-added services lead to greater patients’ consulting intention. This effect is mediated by benevolent inferred intentions of physicians as perceived by potential patients. Moreover, this research demonstrates that a reversal of the main effect is observed in scenarios involving high (vs low) disease severity. Originality/value This study proposes the classification of physicians’ value-added services and introduces them into the research of online health communities. Drawing on social information processing theory, it identifies benevolently inferred intentions as the underlying mechanism and disease severity as a boundary condition. The findings also offer actionable insights for designing effective interactive marketing strategies.