To continue consultation or not? How physicians’ information cues affect patients continued online consultation behavior

Although online healthcare consultations (OHC) have become popular in recent years, OHC platforms struggle to attract patients to continue use. Extant research on predicting patients’ continued consultation behavior (CCB) has mainly focused on improving physicians’ service quality, whilst neglecting the impact of doctors’ information cues. This study proposes a model to uncover the underlying mechanisms by which physicians’ information cues (i.e., verbal and non-verbal) influence patients’ CCB. Leveraging 18,441 patient consultation records, this study found that: (i) for verbal cues, information intensity and interaction depth have significant positive impacts on patients’ CCB; (ii) vocal cues strengthen the positive impact of information intensity on patients’ CCB, but weaken the positive relationship between interaction depth and patients’ CCB; (iii) the effect of physicians’ interaction depth on patients’ CCB is stronger for patients with psychological diseases than for those with physical diseases. The result contributes to the sustainable development of OHC platforms.