The emergence of online healthcare platforms has changed the competitive environment among physicians. However, little is known about how physicians can improve their performance in this new environment. Platforms also face challenges in comprehending the competitive mechanisms among physicians, which might hinder them from formulating strategic managerial decisions that foster sustained growth. In this light, we extract medical service-related information from physicians' response behavioral data on a prominent healthcare platform, and empirically investigate the factors affecting physicians' online performance from a competitive perspective as well as the gender differences in these effects. The results indicate that physicians' responses significantly impact their online performance, revealing a competitive relationship between physicians and their colleagues in the same department. Specifically, a fast response time and informative responses are positively correlated with the focal physician's performance, whereas colleagues' informative responses negatively impact the focal physician's performance, and this relationship is mediated by the focal physician's response informativeness. Nevertheless, there is no significant correlation between colleagues' response time and the focal physician's performance. The results also unveil that gender moderates the effect of response informativeness on the focal physician's performance. Specifically, colleagues' response informativeness has a more significant impact on male physicians' performance than on female physicians' performance, suggesting a greater propensity for competition among male physicians. Our findings could offer decision support for enhancing physician performance and healthcare platform management.

中文翻译：

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响应越快或越丰富，性能就越好？竞争视角下的在线医疗平台实证分析


在线医疗平台的出现改变了医生之间的竞争环境。然而，人们对医生如何在这种新环境中提高绩效知之甚少。平台在理解医生之间的竞争机制方面还面临挑战，这可能会阻碍他们制定促进持续增长的战略管理决策。有鉴于此，我们从知名医疗平台上医生的反应行为数据中提取医疗服务相关信息，并从竞争角度实证研究影响医生在线表现的因素以及这些影响的性别差异。结果表明，医生的反应显着影响他们的在线表现，揭示了医生和同一部门的同事之间的竞争关系。具体来说，快速响应时间和信息丰富的响应与焦点医生的表现呈正相关，而同事的信息丰富的响应对焦点医生的表现产生负面影响，并且这种关系是由焦点医生的响应信息量调节的。然而，同事的响应时间和焦点医生的表现之间没有显着相关性。结果还揭示了性别调节了反应信息对焦点医生表现的影响。具体而言，同事的反应信息量对男医生的绩效影响比对女医生的绩效更显着，这表明男医生之间更倾向于竞争。我们的研究结果可以为提高医生绩效和医疗保健平台管理提供决策支持。