Abstract: This paper explores the influence mechanism of reply information and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) of the online physician on online patient's intention of an office visit to the physician. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we build the theoretical model and the logit model of office visit intention. In the model, we set the influence of the amount of information and readability of physician's response contents on offline visit intention as the central route, and the influence of physician's eWOM on offline visit intention as the peripheral route, and patient involvement as the moderator variable of the two routes. We collect 15,314 patients' consulting data from good physician online (www.haodf.com) by web crawlers and test the hypotheses. The result shows that the amount of information and readability and eWOM have positive effects on the intention; Patient's involvement increases the importance of readability and amount of information on patient's offline visit intention. Furthermore, patient's involvement decreases the influence of eWOM on patient's offline visit intention.

Key words: online healthcare, information quality, involvement, intention of office visit, elaboration likelihood model