Using Willingness To Pay To Value Close Substitutes: Carrier Screening for Cystic Fibrosis Revisited

Abstract

SUMMARYEvidence suggests that previous uses of willingness to pay (WTP) to value close substitutes may have failed to discriminate between the alternatives being evaluated. This paper reports on the application of a new technique for measuring WTP in such contexts. The alternatives evaluated are two methods of screening for cystic fibrosis carrier status. The results suggest that the new method is more discriminating. Furthermore, the paper provides evidence, from reasons for respondents' WTP valuations and regression analyses, that the use of open-ended WTP questions is not valid. This is in line with the recommendations of a recent, influential, report on the use WTP techniques. ©

Measuring Acceptable Treatment Failure Rates for Community-Acquired Pneumonia: Potential for Reducing Duration of Treatment and Antimicrobial Resistance

“…This approach has been used to generate monetary values for abstract quantities, such as water quality, to evaluate preferences for health products, [23][24][25][26][27] to evaluate societal preferences for health states, 28 and to determine acceptable rates of treatment failure for diabetic foot osteomyelitis. 19 The "take it or leave it" strategy that we used may better approximate real-life decision making, 29 and it may be less prone to framing and anchoring biases, 19,20,30 compared with open-ended strategies.…”

Measurement of consumer preference for treatments used to induce labour: a willingness‐to‐pay approach

“…10,12,27 This was thought to be because patients were being asked to value their own care compared with no treatment, rather than compared with the alternative treatment. 4 Although no signi®cant dierence was found by Donaldson and co-workers (1997) in the overall WTP for the screening methods evaluated, the workers considered the method to be more discriminating, in that extra information was obtained about preferences and about the WTP of each preference group. They found that the majority group was WTP 68% more for their preferred method while the minority group was prepared to pay 90% more for their preferred method and concluded that this information could conceivably be useful in policy decision-making.…”

Rationalising the ‘irrational’: a think aloud study of discrete choice experiment responses

“…Schkade and Payne (1994), in using verbal protocol analysis to investigate responses to a CV study, found individuals justify responses by referring to the cost of the commodity. Donaldson et al (1997) found evidence of cost-based responses in a CV study and argued the finding may arise when open-ended questions are used to elicit willingness to pay. However, Ryan and San Miguel (2000) and Ryan et al (2004) both found evidence of cost-based responses using the payment card and dichotomous choice CV approaches.…”