Physicians’ Contributions to Online Healthcare Platforms: Relative Effects of Herding Cues and Feedback Types

The rapid diffusion of online healthcare platforms (OHPs) is transforming healthcare delivery by enabling physicians to contribute to these platforms both reactively (e.g., answering patients’ questions) and proactively (e.g., posting health-related articles). Given physicians’ professional stature, workload, and legal responsibilities, understanding what motivates them to contribute to these platforms is crucial. When explicit economic incentives are limited, herding cues (i.e., perceptions of similar others’ behaviors) and online feedback (e.g., user rewards and reviews) may encourage content contributions on online platforms. Yet whether these mechanisms drive physicians—a distinct professional group—to participate in OHPs remains underexplored. This study theorizes and compares the effects of different herding cues (i.e., gender, affiliation, specialization, and experiential) and feedback types (i.e., online rewards and reviews) on physicians’ contributions in OHPs. Results from data on over 10,000 physicians in a leading OHP over a year show substantial variation in how herding cues and feedback types influence contribution behaviors. Among herding cues, gender cues exert the strongest effect, followed by experiential and specialization cues (for proactive contributions only). Feedback types have opposing effects: online rewards primarily drive reactive contributions, while online reviews more strongly predict proactive contributions. This study advances the literature by distinguishing between the motivational roles of herding cues and feedback types in professional digital platforms. Specifically, it highlights the greater influence of surface-level herding cues (e.g., gender) over affiliation cues, the relative importance of deep-level cues (e.g., experience and specialization) in shaping professional engagement, and the differential impacts of feedback types on reactive versus proactive contributions. Platform owners and designers may leverage our findings to tailor engagement strategies—such as emphasizing visible gender cues, facilitating experience-based professional connections, and customizing feedback mechanisms—to foster sustained physician participation.