How Doctors Gain Social and Economic Returns in Online Health-Care Communities: A Professional Capital Perspective
研究医生在在线医疗社区中如何通过地位资本和决策资本获得社会与经济回报，并分析不同医生群体的差异，对理解医生参与动机和社区可持续发展有参考价值。
An online health-care community (OHC) is a novel channel through which doctors share medical or health-care knowledge with patients. While the sustainable development of an OHC relies on doctors’ participation, we have limited information on how doctors can gain benefits from OHCs. In attempting to close this knowledge gap, we examine the determinants of social and economic returns of doctors at OHCs by extending the social exchange theory into the professional domain. The notion of professional capital, as a set of renewable resources for social professionals developed by good education within a territory of social practice, is introduced to understand the unique resources available to doctors for social exchange. Specifically, we examine the effects of status capital and decisional capital (two dimensions of professional capital) on doctors’ social and economic returns. Moreover, we explore how such effects differ across different doctor groups. The results show that, in addition to the widespread pursuit of celebrity doctors (who can be recognized by their high status capital) offline, the doctor’s decisional capital is also an important professional component in maintaining exchange returns at OHCs. This study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between professional capital and the exchange returns, and extends prior research on OHCs through a professional capital perspective with implications for theory and practice.