Reputation, public information, and physician adoption of an innovation.

A dynamic expected utility framework is developed to explore the timing and extent of a physician's adoption of an innovation. The benefits to adoption are uncertain, although an informative public information signal is released with some delay and possibly some inaccuracy. Improvements to the accuracy of the signal do not necessarily cause risk-averse physicians to scale back adoption prior to the signal's release - if physicians are confident enough in the innovation's worth, they may accelerate early adoption in order to capture an earlymover advantage in reputation building.