title: EFFECTS OF MEDICAL DISPUTES ON INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AND NEGATIVE ONLINE WORD-OF-MOUTH.
abstract: Emotions play an important role in human behavior. Negative emotions resulting from medical disputes are problems for medical personnel to solve but also have a significant impact on a hospital's reputation and people's trust in the hospital. One medical dispute case was chosen from an Internet news source to assess the correlation between people's negative emotions and negative online word-of-mouth. Convenience sampling was used in school faculties and university students who had shared their medical treatment experiences online were the research participants. A total of 221 Taiwanese participants volunteered (158 women, 63 men; ages: 26.7% under 19, 22.6% 20-29, 30.8% 30-39,19.9% over 40). Four negative emotions were measured using rating scales: uncertainty, anger, disappointment, and sadness. Four negative online word-of-mouth measures were: venting, advice search, helping receiver, and revenge. A modeled relationship was assessed by partial least square method (PLS). Then, people's positive emotions were further analyzed to assess changes after spreading negative word-of-mouth. The results showed that uncertainty had a positive effect on venting and advice search. People who felt anger or regret spread word-of-mouth in order to help the receiver. Disappointment may trigger the revenge behavior of negative word-of-mouth. Negative emotions could be relieved after engaging in the behavior of helping the receiver.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of International Business, Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology.
authors.forename: Yi-Chih
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of International Business, Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology.
authors.forename: Wei-Li
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D034462:Dissent and Disputes; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D013624:Taiwan; D035501:Uncertainty; D055815:Young Adult