The Beauty Premium: Physicians’ Appearance and Patients’ Selection and Evaluation Behavior in Online Health Communities

Abstract

AbstractBackground:With the development of information technology, online health communities (OHCs) are becoming an increasingly popular source of health information.Objectives:While the impact of appearance has been extensively studied in various research fields, its role in online health communities has received little attention. This study aims to evaluate the effect of physicians’ appearance on patients’ selection and evaluation behavior in online health communities, and explore the difference in the beauty premium among different types of physicians.Methods:Over 13,000 images of physicians and their relevant information were collected from Good Doctor website, which is now China’s leading OHC. We identified facial features in physicians’ photos based on deep learning and used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models to estimate the relationship between physicians’ appearance and patients’ behavior. We addressed the potential endogeneity issue by utilizing Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method.Results:This study found that physicians’ appearance positively impacts patients’ selection and evaluation behavior. In addition, heterogeneity analysis showed that the appearance of male, high titles, longer service duration, and surgical diseases physicians have a greater influence on patients’ behaviors.Conclusions:The beauty premium exists in online health communities. Therefore, this study provides new evidence on the impact of physicians’ facial appearance in online health communities, and provides useful insights for patients, physicians, and platforms about the relationship between physician’s structured or unstructured information and patients’ decision-making behaviors.