Is information normalization helpful in online communication? Evidence from online healthcare consultation

What is it about?

This study aims to investigate the role of information normalization in online health care consultation, a typical human-to-human communication that requires effectiveness and efficiency. The trend of globalization and digitization calls for high-quality information, and normalization is considered an effective method for information quality improvement. Meanwhile, some researchers have argued that excessive normalization (standardized answers) is impersonal, repetitive and cold. Thus, it is not appreciated for human-to-human communication, especially patients are anxious about their health condition (e.g., with high-risk disease). The role of information normalization in human communication is worthy to be explored. We collected data from one of the largest online health care consultation platforms and developed our model by incorporating information normalization as a new dimension of the information quality model. Patient behaviors, namely, consultant selection and satisfaction, were chosen to measure the performance of communication. Our empirical results verified the contribution of information normalization to communication performance. We also found that the influence of information normalization was moderated by patients’ disease risk. In addition, we found that information normalization can be practiced by experiential learning.

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