OBJECTIVES: Oral chemotherapy generates for hospitals additional resources for therapeutic education and health care coordination currently not taken into account in reimbursement tariffs. This may influence the prescription of oral chemotherapy. We estimated the relative influence of the route and tariff of administration, efficacy, tolerability and adherence on physician’s preferences. METHODS: A Discrete Choice Experiment was performed among 203 French physicians qualified in oncology. From an online questionnaire with six fictive scenarios, first presented in curative setting then in palliative setting, respondents had to choose between treatment A or B which differed with respect to efficacy, tolerability, adherence and route of administration. Three of these attributes (efficacy, tolerability, adherence) had two modalities (good vs. moderate) and the later (route of administration) had three modalities: intravenous (€286–379/session in private and public hospital respectively), oral with the current tariff (€28/consultation), oral with a fictive tariff (€31/consultation and €83 for a patient support program). The relative influence of attributes was analyzed using a conditional logistic regression model.   RESULTS: Efficacy was the predominant criteria in choosing a treatment either in curative setting (β coefficient=2.114, p<0.0001) or in palliative setting (β=1.063, p<0.0001). Oral route of administration had a positive effect in palliative setting (β=0.612, p=0.035 for the current tariff and β=0.506, p<0.0001 for the fictive tariff). Removing the efficacy attribute of the model, tolerability (β=1.228, p<0.0001) and adherence (β=1.223, p<0.0001) were influent, but only in curative setting while the oral route with a fictive tariff remained influential only in palliative setting (β=0.431, p<0.0001).  CONCLUSIONS: The oral route of administration was influential in palliative setting, which is consistent with the priority to preserve quality of life at the advanced stage of disease. Physicians were sensitive to the fictive tariff for a patient support program, but as expected, in curative setting the key criterion remains the efficacy.