互联网会增加居民的医疗消费吗?  

Will the Internet Increase Residents' Medical Consumption?

作　　者：贾宇彤 JIA Yu-tong(School of Public Administration,Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)

机构地区：[1]中南财经政法大学公共管理学院

出　　处：《消费经济》2024年第5期25-37,共13页Consumer Economics

基　　金：国家社会科学基金一般项目(21BGL192);教育部哲学社会科学研究重大课题攻关项目(20JZD025)。

摘　　要：随着我国社会发展步入信息时代,互联网已经成为疾病健康信息的重要传播渠道,当居民获取到更多信息后会影响其就医决策。文章基于中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)2011—2018年数据,以“宽带中国”战略的实施为准自然实验,运用双重差分模型估计了互联网对居民医疗消费的影响。研究发现:入选“宽带中国”示范城市后,居民门诊医疗消费显著增加21%,住院医疗消费则无显著变化,该结果通过了一系列的稳健性检验。机制分析发现,互联网的发展提供了更多的疾病健康信息,但信息的专业性需要更权威的医生作出解读,因此会推动居民前往更高等级医院的门诊,从而导致医疗消费增加。进一步的异质性结果表明,互联网对居民门诊消费的影响在低教育程度、农村和未患慢性病的居民中更显著。文章丰富了居民就医行为的相关研究,并强调了信息在其中的作用,这表明应该把互联网作为疾病健康信息传播的平台,重点关注处理和理解信息较弱的群体,以形成良好的就医秩序并节省医疗消费。With the development of China into the infor mation age, the internet has become an important transmission channel of disease and health information, and residents' access to more information will affect their choice about health care. Based on the data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey(CHARLS)2011—2018, this paper estimates the impact of the internet on residents' medical consumption by using the difference-in-difference model, taking the implementation of the “Broadband China”strategy as a natural experiment. The results show that after the selection of Broadband China pilot cities, the outpatient medical consumption of residents will significantly increase by 21%, while the inpatient medical consumption has no significant change, and the results pass a series of robustness tests. Through mechanism analysis, it is found that the internet provides more information about disease and health, but the professionalism of the information requires more authoritative doctors to interpret it, so it will promote residents to go to outpatient department of higher-level hospitals, resulting in increased medical consumption. Heterogeneity results show that the impact of internet on residents' outpatient consumption was more significant among residents with low education level, rural areas and those without chronic diseases. This paper enriches the relevant research on residents' choice about health care, and emphasizes the role of information in it, which indicates that the Internet should be used as a platform for disease and health information dissemination, focusing on the treatment and understanding of groups with weak information, so as to form a good order of medical treatment and save medical consumption.

关 键 词：互联网 “宽带中国”战略 医疗消费 健康信息 就医选择 

分 类 号：F913.4[经济管理]