The Influence of Doctors’ Online Reputation on the Sharing of Outpatient Experiences: Empirical Study

Abstract

Background

The internet enables consumers to evaluate products before purchase based on feedback submitted by like-minded individuals. Displaying reviews allows customers to assess comparable experiences and encourages trust, increased sales, and brand positivity. Customers use reviews to inform decision making, whereas organizations use reviews to predict future sales. Prior studies have focused on manufactured products, with little attention being paid to health care services. In particular, whether patients prefer to use websites to discuss doctors’ reputation has so far remained unanswered.

Objective

This study aims to investigate how patient propensity to post treatment experiences changes based on doctors’ online reputation (medical quality and service attitude) in delivering outpatient care services. Further, this study examines the moderating effects of hospitals’ (organizational) online reputation and disease severity.

Methods

Fractional logistic regression was conducted on data collected from 7183 active doctors in a Chinese online health community to obtain empirical results.

Results

Our findings show that patients prefer to share treatment experiences for doctors who have a higher medical quality and service attitude (β _{service attitude}=.233; P<.001 and β _{medical quality}=.052; P<.001) and who work in hospitals with a higher online reputation (β=.001; P<.001). Patients are more likely to share experiences of doctors who treat less severe diseases, as opposed to those treating severe diseases (β=−.004; P=.009). In addition, hospitals’ online reputation positively (negatively) moderates the relationship between medical quality (service attitude) and patient propensity to post treatment experiences, whereas the moderating effects of disease severity on doctors’ online reputation are negative.

Conclusions

Our research contributes to both theory and practice by extending the current understanding of the impact of individual reputation on consumer behavior. We investigate the moderating effects of organizational reputation and consumer characteristics in online health communities.