Emotional Intelligence and Customer Satisfaction of Online Health Information

Introduction

The healthcare sector is probably one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy and society contiguously changing in response to a whole range of forces: patient expectations, changing social patterns, public policies and new technology (Agarwal & Labrique, 2014). As a consequence, the consumer of online health information is now viewed in a new perspective as a combination between the traditional patient and the contemporary consumer, having much more knowledge about the health system, open to innovations and with an active role in the process of diagnosis, treatment and maintaining health (Feng & Xie, 2015).

Romania has been and continues to undertake a variety of activities related to the implementation and adoption of technology in its health care system. These efforts have been particularly successful in the primary care sector in all regions of Romania but development of health IT projects must encourage successful adoption and implementation efforts. Withal, Romanian patients may also make use of health IT products, especially those designed to encourage healthier living habits and to enable patients to make appointments with providers.

The importance of various service qualities for customer satisfaction and subsequent adoption of online health services has been evidenced in numerous studies, but there is a paucity of research that explores the linkage between online health service quality satisfactions and customer adoption intentions in the context of Romania (Powell et al., 2011; Thackeray, Crookston & West, 2013; Grande & Taylor, 2010; Bansil et al., 2006).

Emotional intelligence directly influences the performance of an entity in both positive and negative ways because it determines the performance of the entity, the credibility of managers by promoting their values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). These approaches point to the fact that the core of emotional intelligence is the managers' value system, which influences their satisfactions, decisions and behaviors with a major impact on the entity's activities. Organizational effectiveness and efficiency, productivity, open, creative and stimulating work environment, entity role in the community, social responsibility are just some of the values shown by top managers (Gevers & Peeters, 2009). It is also why the employees agree to be evaluated and motivated, as do all the actors involved, in relation to established standards. Where the environment is a mobilizer, they can they work together to maximum effectiveness.

There is a direct link between the need for an entity of change, having as its rationale its evolution, development, the gaining of new markets, or sometimes the staying in the competitive market and the influence of a strong emotional intelligence (Petrides et al., 2016). The latter may be either the key element in the transfer of the entity to another economic level, or the element that salvages the entity from a situation that might have led to its exit from the market. Under the pressure of the external and internal influences, emotional intelligence comes with a substantial contribution that guides the processes of change of entities through decisions and actions of managers (Campo et al., 2016).

The present chapter intends to identify the construct a set of factors that influence customers’ behavioral intentions towards using online health information in Romania. The research questions have been formulated as following: Are health care institutions today making efficient use of the online health information they have available? How to use emotional intelligence in health IT?

This chapter is structured in the following way: in the first section, the authors will introduce a radiography of current situation regarding assessment of the potential for online health service; in the second section, research methodology will be discussed; in the third section, the results of the study and statistics analysis will be discussed; finally, the authors will argue the conclusions and will presented this paper’s limitation.