The Impact of Geographic and Social Proximity on Physicians: Evidence from the Adoption of an Online Health Community

Although online doctor consultations are rapidly gaining popularity, physicians must actively participate in physician–patient interaction platforms to fully unlock their potential. Through a social influence lens, this study empirically investigates physician adoption behavior over time across regions in the diffusion of an online health community (OHC). We examined the impacts of geographically and socially close adopters and investigated the interaction of proximity influences and competition in adoption. We collected panel data on 21,654 physicians in 32 cities in three provinces in China from a large Chinese OHC. The results demonstrate that both geographic and social proximity facilitate adoption when local competition is low. However, as local competition increases, the impact of socially close prior adopters increases, whereas that of geographically close prior adopters decreases. This pattern becomes stronger for physicians with lower titles.