{"title":"The beauty premium: Physicians’ facial expressions and patients’ selection and evaluation behavior in online health communities","authors":"Yanbin Yang, Chengyu Ma, Haopeng Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.hlpt.2024.100895","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><p>With the development of information technology, online health communities (OHCs) are becoming an increasingly popular source of health information.</p></div><div><h3>Objectives</h3><p>While the impact of beauty has been extensively studied in various research fields, its role in OHCs has received little attention. This study aims to evaluate the effect of physicians’ appearance, smile, and positive emotions on patients’ selection and evaluation behavior in OHCs. Additionally, it explores the difference in the beauty premium among different types of physicians.</p></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><p>Over 13,000 images of physicians and their relevant information were collected from the 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’ facial expressions and patients’ behavior. We used PSM to address endogeneity issues and test the robustness of the results.</p></div><div><h3>Results</h3><p>This study found that physicians’ appearance and smile positively impact patients’ selection and evaluation behavior, the results indicated that the beauty premium does exist in OHCs. In addition, heterogeneity analysis showed that the beauty of high titles, longer service duration of physicians has a greater influence on patients’ selection and evaluation behavior.</p></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><p>The beauty premium exists in OHCs. Therefore, this study provides new evidence on the impact of physicians’ facial attractiveness in OHCs and provides useful insights for patients, physicians, and platforms about the relationship between physician's structured or unstructured information and patients’ decision-making behaviors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48672,"journal":{"name":"Health Policy and Technology","volume":"13 4","pages":"Article 100895"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health Policy and Technology","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211883724000583","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background
With the development of information technology, online health communities (OHCs) are becoming an increasingly popular source of health information.
Objectives
While the impact of beauty has been extensively studied in various research fields, its role in OHCs has received little attention. This study aims to evaluate the effect of physicians’ appearance, smile, and positive emotions on patients’ selection and evaluation behavior in OHCs. Additionally, it explores 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 the 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’ facial expressions and patients’ behavior. We used PSM to address endogeneity issues and test the robustness of the results.
Results
This study found that physicians’ appearance and smile positively impact patients’ selection and evaluation behavior, the results indicated that the beauty premium does exist in OHCs. In addition, heterogeneity analysis showed that the beauty of high titles, longer service duration of physicians has a greater influence on patients’ selection and evaluation behavior.
Conclusions
The beauty premium exists in OHCs. Therefore, this study provides new evidence on the impact of physicians’ facial attractiveness in OHCs and provides useful insights for patients, physicians, and platforms about the relationship between physician's structured or unstructured information and patients’ decision-making behaviors.
期刊介绍：
Health Policy and Technology (HPT), is the official journal of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine (FPM), a cross-disciplinary journal, which focuses on past, present and future health policy and the role of technology in clinical and non-clinical national and international health environments.
HPT provides a further excellent way for the FPM to continue to make important national and international contributions to development of policy and practice within medicine and related disciplines. The aim of HPT is to publish relevant, timely and accessible articles and commentaries to support policy-makers, health professionals, health technology providers, patient groups and academia interested in health policy and technology.
Topics covered by HPT will include:
- Health technology, including drug discovery, diagnostics, medicines, devices, therapeutic delivery and eHealth systems
- Cross-national comparisons on health policy using evidence-based approaches
- National studies on health policy to determine the outcomes of technology-driven initiatives
- Cross-border eHealth including health tourism
- The digital divide in mobility, access and affordability of healthcare
- Health technology assessment (HTA) methods and tools for evaluating the effectiveness of clinical and non-clinical health technologies
- Health and eHealth indicators and benchmarks (measure/metrics) for understanding the adoption and diffusion of health technologies
- Health and eHealth models and frameworks to support policy-makers and other stakeholders in decision-making
- Stakeholder engagement with health technologies (clinical and patient/citizen buy-in)
- Regulation and health economics
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