In Reviews We Trust: But Should We? Experiences with Physician Review Websites

The ability to openly evaluate products, locations and services is an achievement of the Web 2.0. It has never been easier to inform oneself about the quality of products or services and possible alternatives. Forming one’s own opinion based on the impressions of other people can lead to better experiences. However, this presupposes trust in one’s fellows as well as in the quality of the review platforms. In previous work on physician reviews and the corresponding websites, it was observed that there occurs faulty behavior by some reviewers and there were noteworthy differences in the technical implementation of the portals and in the efforts of site operators to maintain high quality reviews. These experiences raise new questions regarding what trust means on review platforms, how trust arises and how easily it can be destroyed.