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Are children rational decision makers when they are asked to value their own health? A contingent valuation study conducted with children and their parents

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  • Carla Guerriero
  • John Cairns
  • Fabrizio Bianchi
  • Liliana Cori

Abstract

Despite the importance of including children's preferences in the valuation of their own health benefits, no study has investigated the ability of children to understand willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) questions. Using a contingent valuation method, we elicit children's and parents' WTP to reduce children's risk of an asthma attack. Our results suggest that children are able to understand and value their own health risk reductions, and their ability to do so improves with age. Child age was found to be inversely related to parents' and children's WTP. The results also suggest that non‐paternalistic altruism is predictive of children's WTP. For parents, care for their own health was found to be inversely related with their WTP for children's risk reductions. Comparison of parents' and children's WTP suggests that parents are willing to sacrifice for their child's health risk reduction an amount that is approximately twice that of their children. The analysis of matched pairs of parents and children suggest that there are within‐household similarities as the child's WTP is positively related to parents' WTP.

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  • Carla Guerriero & John Cairns & Fabrizio Bianchi & Liliana Cori, 2018. "Are children rational decision makers when they are asked to value their own health? A contingent valuation study conducted with children and their parents," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 55-68, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:27:y:2018:i:2:p:e55-e68
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.3562
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    Cited by:

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    2. Andronis, Lazaros & Maredza, Mandy & Petrou, Stavros, 2019. "Measuring, valuing and including forgone childhood education and leisure time costs in economic evaluation: Methods, challenges and the way forward," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Pierre-André Chiappori & Edoardo Ciscato & Carla Guerriero, 2020. "Analyzing Matching Patterns in Marriage: Theory and Application to Italian Data," Working Papers 2020-080, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    4. Andronis, Lazaros & Morgan, Cameron & Donaldson, Cam & Lancsar, Emily & Petrou, Stavros, 2023. "Views, obstacles, and uncertainties around the inclusion of children and young people's time in economic evaluations: Findings from an international survey of health economists," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    5. Pierre-André Chiappori & Edoardo Ciscato & Carla Guerriero, 2021. "Analyzing Matching Patterns in Marriage:Theory and Application to Italian Data," CSEF Working Papers 613, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    6. Sun, Sizhong, 2022. "The demand for a COVID-19 vaccine," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    7. Han, Ahram & Ten, Gi Khan & Wang, Shun, 2023. "Gray skies and blue moms: The effect of air pollution on parental life satisfaction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    8. Valentino Dardanone & Carla Guerriero, 2019. "Children's Willingness to Pay for Environmental Protection," CSEF Working Papers 550, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    9. Dardanoni, Valentino & Guerriero, Carla, 2021. "Young people' s willingness to pay for environmental protection," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).

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