How Peer Review Mechanism Affects Physician Service Performance? Evidence from an Online Healthcare Platform

To mitigate the challenge of information asymmetry in the online healthcare market, several online healthcare platforms have introduced peer review mechanisms among physicians, allowing physicians to recommend and endorse on each other. This study empirically investigates how peer review mechanisms affect patients' decisions to consult physicians by leveraging the launch of a peer review system as a natural experiment. Our difference-in-differences estimation shows that the introduction of the peer review mechanism positively influences the online consultation volume of physicians who actually received peer reviews. Moreover, our source analysis of peer reviews reveals that the value of peer reviews in attracting online consultations varies by their sources. This study further examines the interaction effects between peer reviews and patient reviews on patient choices. The results suggest that there is a substitute relationship between the two types of reviews in influencing patient choices. Our study has important implications for research and practice.