Shujing Sun

Assistant Professor in Information Systems

Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas

Biography

Shujing Sun joins the University of Texas at Dallas, Naveen Jindal School of Management, as an assistant professor of Information Systems in Fall 2020. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Information Systems at Simon Business School, University of Rochester. Her research interests lie in the economic implications of IT innovations in new service settings, with a current focus on the healthcare market and social media.

Interests

Healthcare
Social Media
Economics of Technology
Online Health Community

Education

Ph.D. in Information Systems, 2020

Simon Business School, University of Rochester, Rochester, US
B.S. in Information Systems, 2014

Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

Publications

The Power of Identity Cues in Text-Based Customer Service: Evidence from Twitter.

( Forthcoming at MIS Quarterly )
Text-based customer service is emerging as an important channel through which companies can assist customers. However, the use of few identity cues may cause customers to feel limited social presence and even suspect the human identity of agents, especially in the current age of advanced algorithms. Does such a lack of social presence affect service interactions? We studied this timely question by evaluating the impact of customers’ perceived social presence on service outcomes and customers’ attitudes toward agents. Our identification strategy hinged on Southwest Airlines’ sudden requirement to include a first name in response to service requests on Twitter, which enhanced customers’ perceived level of social presence. This change led customers to become more willing to engage and more likely to reach a resolution upon engagement. We further conducted a randomized experiment to understand the underlying mechanisms. We found that the effects were mainly driven by customers who were ex ante uncertain or suspicious about the human identity of agents, and the presence of identity cues improved service outcomes by enhancing customers’ perceived levels of trust and empathy. Additionally, we found no evidence of elevated verbal aggression from customers toward agents with identity cues, although a mechanism test revealed the moderating role of customers’ emotional states. Our study highlights the importance of social presence in text-based customer service and suggests a readily available and almost costless strategy for firms: signal humanization through identity cues.

Yang Gao, Huaxia Rui, Shujing Sun

Does Active Service Intervention Drive More Complaints on Social Media? The Roles of Service Quality and Awareness.

Journal of Management Information Systems
Despite many advantages of social media as a customer service channel, there is a concern that active service intervention encourages excessive service complaints. Our paper casts doubt on this misconception by examining the dynamics between social media customer complaints and brand service interventions. We find service interventions indeed cause more complaints, yet this increase is driven by service awareness rather than chronic complaining. Due to the publicity and connectivity of social media, customers learn about the new service channel by observing customer service delivery to others – a mechanism that is unique to social media customer service and does not exist for traditional call centers. Importantly, high-quality service reduces future complaints, thereby proactive customer service is a sound strategy on social media, as long as firms dedicate to service quality. Hence, firms should be less concerned about whether to respond and more focused on how to respond to customer complaints.

Shujing Sun, Yang Gao, Huaxia Rui

Does Telemedicine Reduce Emergency Room Congestion? Evidence from New York State.

Information Systems Research
Overcrowding in emergency rooms (ERs) is a common yet nagging problem. It not only is costly for hospitals but also compromises care quality and patient experience. Hence, finding effective ways to improve ER care delivery is of great importance. Using a large dataset covering all emergency visits of New York State from 2010 to 2014, we investigate whether telemedicine enhances ER care delivery. We show that, on average, telemedicine availability in the ER significantly reduces average patients’ length of stay (LOS), which is partially driven by the flexible resource allocation. Specifically, the adoption of telemedicine leads to a larger reduction in ER LOS when there is a demand surge or supply shortage. Furthermore, such improvement is not a byproduct of other widely adopted health IT applications and does not come at the expense of care quality or patient cost. We also replicate the analysis using annual U.S. hospital data and find that ER telemedicine adoption significantly reduces average patients’ waiting time, which suggests that the LOS reduction partially comes from the reduction of waiting time.

Shujing Sun, Susan Feng Lu, Huaxia Rui

INFORMS News Room UTD News Center ScienceDaily Dallas Innovates Science Codex EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Working Papers

Does Telemedicine Reduce Prescription Errors? Evidence from Antibiotic Prescriptions for Urinary Tract Infections.

Telemedicine has long been of interest to the U.S. general public. Yet, despite the advent of high-speed internet and mobile device technology, telemedicine did not reach its full potential until the COVID-19 pandemic spurred its unparalleled adoption. This sudden shift in the setting of healthcare delivery raises questions regarding possible changes in clinical decision-making. Using a unique set of patient-provider encounter data from the U.S. in 2020 and 2021, we examine the effect of telemedicine on antibiotic prescription errors for urinary tract infections. We consider two types of prescription errors: prescribing when not recommended by guidelines (type I errors) and not prescribing when recommended (type II errors). After accounting for potential endogeneity issues using provider fixed effects and an instrumental variable approach, we find a significantly lower likelihood of overall prescription errors (type I and II errors combined) with telemedicine relative to in-person encounters. We also find heterogeneous effects by provider patient volume and patient-provider relationship. Further analyses show that the reduction in prescription errors is mainly attributable to type I errors, and that patient health outcomes are not compromised when care is delivered via telemedicine. Finally, we discuss managerial implications for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, as well as policy implications for governments.

Tongil TI Kim, Shujing Sun, Guihua Wang

Last updated on Oct 1, 2022

Does Telehealth Reduce Rural-Urban Care Access Disparities? Evidence from COVID-19 Telehealth Expansion.

We study the effect of the telehealth expansion policy on rural-urban healthcare-access disparities. Using a unique set of national healthcare claims data, we address three questions concerning the uptake of telehealth during COVID-19: (1) Does the expansion reduce the disparity in overall healthcare access between rural and urban areas? (2) Do telehealth visits complement or substitute in-person visits? (3) What barriers prevent healthcare providers and patients from adopting telehealth? We use providers from rural areas as the control group and compare the total number of visits between urban and rural providers before and after telehealth expansion. We find that urban providers treated significantly more patients than rural providers, and such an increase is driven by increased care access of urban patients. Therefore, the finding suggests an enlarged rural-urban disparity regarding patients’ overall access to care. Moreover, we find urban patients substitute in-person visits with telehealth visits. However, rural patients have much lower adoption rates of telehealth services and continue with in-person visits. We supplement the paper with analyses of heterogeneous treatment effects by providers and barriers that have affected individuals’ telehealth adoptions.

Shujing Sun, Guihua Wang