Consumer-generated online reviews of credence service providers, such as doctors, have become common on platforms such as Yelp and RateMDs. Yet doctors have challenged the legitimacy of these platforms on the grounds that consumers do not have the expertise required to evaluate the quality of the medical care they receive. This challenge is supported by the economics of information literature, which has characterized doctors as a credence service, meaning that consumers cannot evaluate quality even after consumption. Are interventions needed to ensure that consumers are not misled by these reviews? Data from real online reviews shows that many of the claims made in real reviews of credence service providers focus on experience attributes, such as promptness, which consumers can typically evaluate, rather than credence attributes, such as knowledge. Follow-up experiments show that consumers are more likely to believe experience claims (vs. credence claims) made by other consumers, claims that are supported by data, and longer reviews even if they are not more informative. The authors discuss implications for consumers and credence service providers and possible policy interventions.

中文翻译：

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Credence 服务提供商的在线评论：消费者评估什么，其他消费者是否相信评论，以及是否需要干预？

消费者对信用服务提供商（例如医生）的在线评论在 Yelp 和 RateMDs 等平台上变得很普遍。然而，医生们质疑这些平台的合法性，理由是消费者不具备评估他们接受的医疗服务质量所需的专业知识。这一挑战得到了信息文学经济学的支持，该经济学将医生描述为一种信任服务，这意味着消费者即使在消费后也无法评估质量。是否需要采取干预措施以确保消费者不会被这些评论误导？来自真实在线评论的数据显示，在对信任服务提供商的真实评论中提出的许多声明都侧重于体验属性，例如消费者通常可以评估的及时性，而不是信任属性，例如知识。后续实验表明，消费者更有可能相信其他消费者提出的体验声明（相对于信任声明）、有数据支持的声明以及更长的评论，即使它们没有提供更多信息。作者讨论了对消费者和信用服务提供商的影响以及可能的政策干预。