Converting Visitors of Physicians’ Personal Websites to Customers in Online Health Communities: Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND: With the dramatic development of Web 2.0, increasing numbers of patients and physicians are actively involved in online health communities. Despite extensive research on online health communities, the conversion rate from visitor to customer and its driving factors have not been discussed. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyze the conversion rate of online health communities and to explore the effects of multisource online health community information, including physician-generated information, patient-generated information, and system-generated information. METHODS: An empirical study was conducted to examine the effects of physician-generated, patient-generated, and system-generated information on the conversion rate of physicians’ personal websites by analyzing short panel data from 2112 physicians over five time periods in a Chinese online health community. RESULTS: Multisource online health community information (ie, physician-generated, patient-generated, and system-generated information) positively affected the conversion rate. Physician-generated and patient-generated information showed a substitute relationship rather than a complementary relationship. In addition, the usage time of a personal website positively moderated patient-generated information, but negatively moderated physician-generated information. CONCLUSIONS: This study contributes to the electronic health literature by investigating the conversion rate of online health communities and the effect of multisource online health community information. This study also contributes to understanding the drivers of conversion rate on service websites, which can help to successfully improve the efficiency of online health communities.