Harvard Business Review research confirms Etheal’s empirical findings on review incentivization
A Harvard Business Review study concludes that incentives reduce bias in online reviews
Time and again we come to realize the the internet is a place of polar extremes. Digital media has given to the rise of biased news silos. Titanic search companies and social platforms reward high ad budgets with greater visibility, neglecting smaller brands and budgets. In the US, net neutrality has taken the next step towards limiting equal access to all corners of the web.
But systemic bias and skewed information is not just a flaw of the system. It’s also a side effect of our own psychology.
A new study by Harvard Business Review confirms that online reviews are over-represented by extremely negative or positive experiences — those experiences that motivate someone to actually take the time to sit down and write a review. And this is an issue. After all, these are the same reviews that consumers, businesses and employers rely on to provide a fair and true assessment of a product, service or experience.
Harvard Business Review on reducing bias in online peer reviews
HBR tested an incentive scheme both in the laboratory and in the real world through an online incentive program on Glassdoor. Their findings confirmed Etheal’s own working hypothesis:
“Relatively inexpensive incentives…can dramatically reduce bias and encourage more moderate voices to join the online conversation.”
— Harvard Business Review, “Online Reviews Are Biased. Here’s How to Fix Them”
Using social incentives — like reminding people of how helpful their opinions are for others — as well as different monetary incentives, HBR was able to correct bias and create a more normal bell-curve distribution of reviews.
Incentivizing healthcare provider reviews with Etheal
At Etheal, we’ve identified the motivating power of incentivization from day one.
This is why we’ve built our working model on two principles:
- In order to restore the crippling lack of trust in global healthcare, patients need to have easy access to well-organized peer reviews of healthcare providers.
- To ensure that enough patients leave unbiased and diverse reviews on the platform, we have to create incentives that are high enough in value to motivate everyone in our community to participate.
We’ve seen the value of compensation in building valuable sources of information in sites like booking.com, steemit and yelp. And this latest Harvard Business Review study confirms that we’re on the right track.
Minimizing Risk With the Right Incentives
Finding the sweet spot in incentivization is the key to creating real transparency. If the incentives are too low, users will not be motivated to act. Incentives that are too high or a low barrier to entry will drive fake users to cheat the system. At Etheal we work together with incentive experts to design a balanced system that effectively eliminates bias and builds transparency.
