Choosing a primary care physician to visit for the first time is an important decision, one that healthcare systems do not particularly make easy for prospective patients to make solely via the limited information they publicly provide on their websites. Thus, without knowledge from others, a new patient may have much uncertainty about the physician he or she chooses before the first consultation. Guided by predictions derived from media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984), this study added videos to primary care physicians' biographies to test whether they are able to reduce uncertainty more than verbatim, traditional text biographies. Additionally, through predictions generated from uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) it was proposed that biographies containing similarity inducing information would reduce uncertainty more than those biographies containing information of a more professional (i.e., dissimilar) nature. Three-hundred-and twenty adult female participants completed an online experiment where they were exposed to two biographies of different doctors with different mediums and different kinds of information (either professional or personal). Results revealed that: perceived similarity was related to reductions in uncertainty; video biographies were related to greater uncertainty reduction, as well as greater levels of anticipated care quality and patient satisfaction; and in a simulated decision-making task participants chose the physician with whom they perceived the greatest level of similarity. Participants' opinions regarding the level of importance they place on knowing various pieces of information when in the decision-making phase, as well as their thoughts for improving video biographies, were also revealed. Theoretical implications for the role of uncertainty reduction and media richness in the context of choosing a new physician are explored. Practical implications for how healthcare systems can use these results to help improve the physician biographical offerings they may currently be providing prospective patients are also discussed.
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