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"Online information services Design."
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Channels of Impact: User Reviews When Quality Is Dynamic and Managers Respond
We examine the effect of managerial response on consumer voice in a dynamic quality environment. We argue that the consumer is motivated to write reviews not only because reviews may impact other consumers, but because reviews may impact the management and the quality of the service. We examine this empirically in a scenario in which reviewers receive a credible signal that the service provider is listening. Specifically, we examine the “managerial response” feature allowed by many review platforms. We hypothesize that managerial responses will stimulate reviewing activity and, in particular, will stimulate negative reviews that are seen as more impactful. This effect is further heightened because managers respond more and in more detail to negative reviews. Using a multiple-differences specification, we show that reviewing activity and particularly negative reviewing is indeed stimulated by managerial response. Our specification exploits comparison of the same hotel immediately before and after response initiation and compares a given hotel’s reviewing activity on sites with review response initiation to that on sites that do not allow managerial response. We also explore the mechanism behind the effect using an online experiment.
Data and the online appendix are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2018.1090
.
Journal Article
Consumers’ Evaluation of Web-Based Health Information Quality: Meta-analysis
The internet has become a major source of health information for general consumers. Web-based health information quality varies widely across websites and applications. It is critical to understand the factors that shape consumers' evaluation of web-based health information quality and the role that it plays in their appraisal and use of health information and information systems.
This paper aimed to identify the antecedents and consequences of consumers' evaluation of web-based health information quality as a means to consolidate the related research stream and to inform future studies on web-based health information quality.
We systematically searched 10 databases, examined reference lists, and conducted manual searches. Empirical studies that investigated consumers' evaluation of web-based health information quality, credibility, or trust and their respective relationships with antecedents or consequences were included.
We included 147 studies reported in 136 papers in the analysis. Among the antecedents of web-based health information quality, system navigability (ρ=0.56), aesthetics (ρ=0.49), and ease of understanding (ρ=0.49) had the strongest relationships with web-based health information quality. The strongest consequences of web-based health information quality were consumers' intentions to use health information systems (ρ=0.58) and satisfaction with health information (ρ=0.46). Web-based health information quality relationships were moderated by numerous cultural dimensions, research designs, and publication moderators.
Consumers largely rely on peripheral cues and less on cues that require more information processing (eg, content comprehensiveness) to determine web-based health information quality. Surprisingly, the relationships between individual differences and web-based health information quality are trivial. Web-based health information quality has stronger effects on cognitive appraisals and behavioral intentions than on behavior. Despite efforts to include various moderators, a substantial amount of variance is still unexplained, indicating a need to study additional moderators. This meta-analysis provides broad and consistent evidence for web-based health information quality relationships that have been fractured and incongruent in empirical studies.
Journal Article
Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is an online labor market where requesters post jobs and workers choose which jobs to do for pay. The central purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to use this Web site for conducting behavioral research and to lower the barrier to entry for researchers who could benefit from this platform. We describe general techniques that apply to a variety of types of research and experiments across disciplines. We begin by discussing some of the advantages of doing experiments on Mechanical Turk, such as easy access to a large, stable, and diverse subject pool, the low cost of doing experiments, and faster iteration between developing theory and executing experiments. While other methods of conducting behavioral research may be comparable to or even better than Mechanical Turk on one or more of the axes outlined above, we will show that when taken as a whole Mechanical Turk can be a useful tool for many researchers. We will discuss how the behavior of workers compares with that of experts and laboratory subjects. Then we will illustrate the mechanics of putting a task on Mechanical Turk, including recruiting subjects, executing the task, and reviewing the work that was submitted. We also provide solutions to common problems that a researcher might face when executing their research on this platform, including techniques for conducting synchronous experiments, methods for ensuring high-quality work, how to keep data private, and how to maintain code security.
Journal Article
Seriousness checks are useful to improve data validity in online research
Nonserious answering behavior increases noise and reduces experimental power; it is therefore one of the most important threats to the validity of online research. A simple way to address the problem is to ask respondents about the seriousness of their participation and to exclude self-declared nonserious participants from analysis. To validate this approach, a survey was conducted in the week prior to the German 2009 federal election to the Bundestag. Serious participants answered a number of attitudinal and behavioral questions in a more consistent and predictively valid manner than did nonserious participants. We therefore recommend routinely employing seriousness checks in online surveys to improve data validity.
Journal Article
The Effectiveness of Online Shopping Characteristics and Well-Designed Websites on Satisfaction
Electronic commerce has grown rapidly in recent years. However, surveys of online customers continue to indicate that many remain unsatisfied with their online purchase experiences. Clearly, more research is needed to better understand what affects customers' evaluations of their online experiences. Through a large dataset gathered from two online websites, this study investigates the importance of product uncertainty and retailer visibility in customers' online purchase decisions, as well as the mitigating effects of retailer characteristics. We find that high product uncertainty and low retailer visibility have a negative impact on customer satisfaction. However, a retailer's service quality, website design, and pricing play important roles in mitigating the negative impact of high product uncertainty and low retailer visibility. Specifically, service quality can mitigate the negative impacts of low retailer visibility and high product uncertainty in online markets. Website design, on the other hand, helps to reduce the impact of product uncertainty when experience goods are involved.
Journal Article
The QUEST for quality online health information: validation of a short quantitative tool
Background
Online health information is unregulated and can be of highly variable quality. There is currently no singular quantitative tool that has undergone a validation process, can be used for a broad range of health information, and strikes a balance between ease of use, concision and comprehensiveness. To address this gap, we developed the QUality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST). Here we report on the analysis of the reliability and validity of the QUEST in assessing the quality of online health information.
Methods
The QUEST and three existing tools designed to measure the quality of online health information were applied to two randomized samples of articles containing information about the treatment (
n
= 16) and prevention (
n
= 29) of Alzheimer disease as a sample health condition. Inter-rater reliability was assessed using a weighted Cohen’s kappa (κ) for each item of the QUEST. To compare the quality scores generated by each pair of tools, convergent validity was measured using Kendall’s tau (τ) ranked correlation.
Results
The QUEST demonstrated high levels of inter-rater reliability for the seven quality items included in the tool (κ ranging from 0.7387 to 1.0,
P
< .05). The tool was also found to demonstrate high convergent validity. For both treatment- and prevention-related articles, all six pairs of tests exhibited a strong correlation between the tools (τ ranging from 0.41 to 0.65,
P
< .05).
Conclusions
Our findings support the QUEST as a reliable and valid tool to evaluate online articles about health. Results provide evidence that the QUEST integrates the strengths of existing tools and evaluates quality with equal efficacy using a concise, seven-item questionnaire. The QUEST can serve as a rapid, effective, and accessible method of appraising the quality of online health information for researchers and clinicians alike.
Journal Article
Internet use for health information, health service utilization, and quality of care in the U.S
Background
Increased internet use for health information in the United States enhances interactions with healthcare professionals, but its effects on healthcare utilization and care quality are still being investigated. We explored the association between internet use for health information, patient-centered communication (PCC), and sociodemographic factors on the likelihood of visiting a health care provider and quality of care. We also examined if PCC mediates this association.
Methods
We conducted a secondary data analysis using the National Cancer Center Institutes (NCI) Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 2018–2020. Multinomial logistic regression and path analyses assessed variable interrelationships and mediating effects.
Results
Individuals using the internet for health information for themselves were 2.40 times more likely (
P
<.001) to have frequent provider visits and 1.18 times more likely (
P
<.022) to rate their care as very good/good compared to excellent, compared to those who did not use the internet for health information for themselves. In contrast, individuals using the internet for discussion with their providers were 2.05 times more likely (
P
<.001) to have increased visits, and they were 40% less likely (
P
<.001) to rate their care as fair/poor compared to excellent, relative to those who did not use the internet for discussions. Path analysis indicated that individuals using the internet for health information for themselves may negatively impact PCC, resulting in lower quality ratings, while those who use the internet for discussions with healthcare providers had a positive effect on PCC, leading to higher care ratings.
Conclusion
This study enhances our understanding of how PCC and internet use for health information impact US healthcare. Using the internet for provider discussions positively impacts perceived care quality, highlighting PCC’s vital role.
Journal Article
The viability of crowdsourcing for survey research
Online contract labor portals (i.e., crowdsourcing) have recently emerged as attractive alternatives to university participant pools for the purposes of collecting survey data for behavioral research. However, prior research has not provided a thorough examination of crowdsourced data for organizational psychology research. We found that, as compared with a traditional university participant pool, crowdsourcing respondents were older, were more ethnically diverse, and had more work experience. Additionally, the reliability of the data from the crowdsourcing sample was as good as or better than the corresponding university sample. Moreover, measurement invariance generally held across these groups. We conclude that the use of these labor portals is an efficient and appropriate alternative to a university participant pool, despite small differences in personality and socially desirable responding across the samples. The risks and advantages of crowdsourcing are outlined, and an overview of practical and ethical guidelines is provided.
Journal Article
Pricing Ancillary Service Subscriptions
We investigate heterogeneous customer choice behavior in the presence of main products
—ancillary services
with options of pay-per-use and
subscription—
and outside option. The willingness to pay for a service subscription is derived as a closed-form expression, which enables us to characterize the optimal pricing strategy and the impact of service subscriptions on customer surplus. Analytical results and numerical experiments show that offering service subscriptions may result in “win-win,” “win-win-win,” “win-win-lose,” or “lose-lose-win” scenarios or in other situations for the firm, competitors, and customers in a variety of monopolistic and duopolistic scenarios. The advantages of service subscription still remain with heterogeneous customers differing on multiple dimensions including the nominal utility, uncertainty in the need of ancillary service, and purchase frequency. We find that if the product quality for both firms, measured by nominal utility, is not significantly different, more fierce price competition by offering a service subscription may result in a higher customer surplus, compared with that without a service subscription. Ancillary service subscription can help firms to better price-discriminate heterogeneous customers through different subscription decisions and subsequent purchase behavior.
This paper was accepted by Gad Allon, operations management.
Journal Article