We propose a structural relationship between the value of preventing a statistical cancer fatality and the value of statistical life (VSL) for risks of an instantaneous road accident fatality. This relationship incorporates a context effect reflecting both the illness or 'morbidity' associated with cancer fatality and the 'dread' or horror associated with the prospect of eventual death from cancer, as well as a latency effect that captures the discounting likely to arise because the onset of the symptoms of cancer typically occurs after some delay. We use a Risk-Risk trade-off study to validate this model by directly estimating the influence of context and latency effects upon the relative size of the VSL for cancer and for road accidents, confirming that both effects are significant and estimating their size using regression analysis. We show that morbidity accounts for the majority of the context premium. We use the elicited coefficients to reconstruct VSL estimates for a range of cancers characterised by their latency and morbidity periods.

Abstract. Unimodal intertemporal decisions involve comparing options of the same type (e.g., apples now versus apples later), and cross-modal decisions involve comparing options of different types (e.g., a car now versus a vacation later). As we show, existing models of intertemporal choice do not allow time preference to depend on whether the comparisons to be made are unimodal or cross-modal. We test this restriction in an experiment using the delayed compensation method, a new extension of the standard method of eliciting intertemporal preferences that allows for assessment of time preference for nonmonetary and discrete outcomes, as well as for both cross-modal and unimodal comparisons. Participants were much more averse to delay for unimodal than cross-modal decisions. We provide two potential explanations for this effect: one drawing on multiattribute choice, the other drawing on construal-level theory.

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