How Do Voice Characteristics Affect Perceived Communication Quality? Evidence from Online Health Communities

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-724-3_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Social support theory; Emotional dimension model; Online healthcare community; Perceived communication quality; Offline visit experience

Abstract

With the widespread adoption of the Internet and the continuous development of digital technologies, online health communities (OHC) are increasingly becoming an essential channel for patients seeking expert health consultations. In this context, effectively attracting consumers and improving online communication quality are the top priorities for online health communities. Existing research has attempted to address this issue from many perspectives. However, the influence of the physicians’ voice characteristics on patients’ perceived communication quality is unclear. Based on social support theory, our research examines the impact of three emotional dimensions of physicians’ voice—valence, arousal, and dominance—on perceived communication quality. Our research collected about 10,966 patient consultation records with voice messages from the well-known Chinese online health community Haodf. Empirical results show that the valence and dominance dimensions positively impact patients’ perceived communication quality, while the arousal dimension has a negative impact. Additionally, patient gender and offline visit experience moderate the relationship between the emotional dimensions of physicians’ voices and perceived communication quality.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Siyuan Xu
AU  - Donghui Yang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/05/26
TI  - How Do Voice Characteristics Affect Perceived Communication Quality? Evidence from Online Health Communities
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Informatization Economic Development and Management (IEDM 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 30
EP  - 42
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-724-3_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-724-3_4
ID  - Xu2025
ER  -