How your colleagues’ reputation impact your patients’ odds of posting experiences: Evidence from an online health community

• We looked into the role of reputation in healthcare.
• We used the data of a large online health community.
• We found the moderation effect of a physician’s colleagues’ reputation.

Given our limited and irrational use of medical resources, governments hope that using online health communities can help patients receive necessary treatments. Although abundant research has studied the role of reputation in e-commerce, studies on the role of reputation in online health communities (OHCs) remain scarce. This paper focuses on investigating how the reputation of one physician’s colleagues affects the focal physician’s future review amount, which is an important predictor for physicians’ performance in the future. We examine this question by studying a special service: Online Booking, Service in Hospitals (OBSH). We find that both the focal physician’s reputation and his/her colleagues’ reputation have significant impact on his/her patients’ odds of sharing their treatment experience online. In addition, colleagues’ reputation negatively moderates the relationship between the focal physician’s reputation and his/her patients’ odds of sharing their treatment experience.