Willingness to pay and financing preferences for COVID-19 vaccination in China

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant diseases and economic burdens in the world. Vaccines are often considered as a cost-effective way to prevent and control infectious diseases, and the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines have been progressing unprecedently. It is needed to understand individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) among general population, which provides information about social demand, access and financing for future COVID-19 vaccination. Objective To investigate individuals’ WTP and financing mechanism preference for COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic period in China. Methods During March 1-18, 2020, we conducted a network stratified random sampling survey with 2058 respondents in China. The survey questionnaires included out-of-pocket WTP, financing mechanism preference as well as basic characteristics of the respondents; risk perception and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; attitude for future COVID-19 vaccination. Multivariable Tobit regression was used to determine impact factors for respondents’ out-of-pocket WTP. Results The individuals’ mean out-of-pocket WTP for full COVID-19 vaccination was CNY 254 (USD 36.8) with median of CNY 100 (USD 14.5). Most respondents believed that governments (90.9%) and health insurance (80.0%) needed to pay for some or full portions of COVID-19 vaccination, although 84.3% stated that individuals needed to pay. Annual family income, employee size in the workplace, and whether considering the COVID-19 pandemic in China in a declining trend affected respondents’ WTP significantly. Conclusion The findings demonstrated the individuals’ WTP for COVID-19 vaccination in China and their preferences for financing sources from individuals, governments and health insurance. And to suggest an effective and optimal financing strategy, the public health perspective with equal access to COVID-19 vaccination should be prioritized to ensure a high vaccination rate.

Acceptance and willingness to pay for COVID-19 vaccine among school teachers in Gondar City, Northwest Ethiopia

“…In addition to this, the present study also revealed that only 36.9% of participants were willing to pay for the vaccine. This finding is very low when compared to previous studies done in Indonesia [ 8 ] and China [ 24 ], where 78.3% and 89.7% of their participants were willing to pay for the COVID-19 vaccine respectively. This discrepancy may be accounted for variations in the spread of the pandemic across the countries.…”

“…Given this, participants of this study may have lower perceived benefit of the vaccine than the participants from Indonesia due to the higher COVID-19 infection spread in Indonesia compared to Ethiopia. In this study, the median willingness to pay was 6 times lower than the median willingness to pay reported from Indonesia [ 8 ] and Malaysia [ 26 ], 2.5 times lower than the median willingness to pay reported from China [ 24 ], and the mean WTP of this study is 47.4 times lower than the mean willingness to pay reported from Chile [ 14 ]. This can be explained by the fact that the per capita income of Ethiopia is lower than those countries where the aforementioned previous studies were conducted.…”

“…For instance, the per capita income of Ethiopia is 94.4% lower than that of Chile [ 27 ]. Moreover, context-specific factors such as perception of the severity and risk of diseases, which varied across disease types or locations may be another reason for the observed [ 7 , 24 , 26 ]. For example, the perceived risk of getting sick by COVID-19 was 39.1% higher among Chile population compared to this study’s participants [ 7 ].…”

Acceptance and willingness to pay for COVID‐19 vaccines among pregnant women in Vietnam

“…That amount was over 1.7 times higher than the mean WTP for flu vaccine among Vietnamese women of childbearing age (USD 8.5) [30], reflecting a greater perceived benefit of health gained from preventing COVID-19 than seasonal flu. However, our result was significantly lower than the amount of WTP for the COVID-19 vaccines in previous studies conducted in Indonesia (USD 57.2) [16], Malaysia (USD 30.66) [19], China (ranging from USD 28 to USD 149) [20][21][22], and Ecuador (up to USD 102.5) [24]. Besides the perception of the risk and severity of the disease, which varied across countries, we suppose another possible reason was that our study was performed when several COVID-19 vaccines were officially launched to market and information on prices of those vaccines were available while previous studies were conducted with hypothetical COVID-19 vaccines.…”

“Please, you go first!” preferences for a COVID-19 vaccine among adults in the Netherlands

“…People's preferences for a COVID-19 vaccine have previously been examined using discrete choice experiments (DCEs) ( Borriello et al, 2021 ; Craig, 2021 ; Dong et al, 2020 ; Leng et al, 2021 ) and other preference elicitation methods ( Motta, 2021 ; Catma and Varol, 2021 ; García and Cerda, 2020 ; Kreps et al, 2020 ; Sarasty et al, 2020 ; Tervonen et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). These studies investigated how the uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine was affected by characteristics such as effectiveness, location, availability, country of production, price, duration of protection and risk of side effects.…”