Benefiting others, benefiting ourselves: exploring the impact of joining online medical teams from a physician's perspective

Purpose Physicians' participation in online medical teams (OMTs) often extends beyond workload sharing or financial gain, encompassing opportunities to expand clinical knowledge, and refine professional skills. Yet it remains unclear whether such knowledge-related benefits are realized and how they might translate into tangible personal outcomes. From a knowledge-based perspective, this study aims to examine whether team knowledge attributes influence physicians' financial and reputational returns, and whether physicians' self-efficacy mediates these effects. Design/methodology/approach Unbalanced panel data were obtained from China's online health communities (OHCs) covering the period from June 2021 to April 2022. The final dataset comprised 552 teams with a total of 1,347 physicians. To test the proposed hypotheses, we employed an empirical analysis based on a time fixed-effects model. Findings The findings indicate that the knowledge attributes of OMTs exert a positive impact on physicians' financial and reputational returns, with physicians' self-efficacy serving as a key mediating mechanism. Furthermore, physicians' teamwork engagement moderates the relationship between knowledge attributes and self-efficacy in an inverted U-shaped manner. Originality/value This study advances OMT research by showing how team-level knowledge attributes generate individual-level value for physicians. It distinguishes an external signaling route from an internal developmental route, thereby clarifying how OMTs shape both market-facing outcomes and physicians' self-efficacy. By identifying the inverted U-shaped boundary role of teamwork engagement, this study further shows that engagement in virtual medical teams should be optimized rather than maximized, offering implications for team design, knowledge presentation, and physician workload management in OHCs.