IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp1384.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How You Ask Is What You Get: Willingness-to-Pay for a QALY in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Marlies Ahlert
  • Friedrich Breyer
  • Lars Schwettmann

Abstract

We report results of a survey of a representative sample of the German population in which respondents were asked for their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for either an extension of their life or an improvement in their health corresponding to a gain of one quality-adjusted life year (QALY). While one version of the survey exactly copied the questionnaire used in the EuroVaQ project (Pennington et al. 2014), in other versions the wording and the survey technique were modified. The findings show first that Germans have no higher WTP for health gains than other Europeans. Second, the technique of posing the questions plays an important role when respondents are asked to imagine being in hypothetical situations. This clearly refers to the wording of the questions and the survey setting (personal or online interview). But even simple design elements such as offering an explicit option to say “No” right away greatly affect the answers, as does the position in the questionnaire that a particular question is given. This shows that in any attempts to base health care rationing decisions on the WTP of the population, where the latter is to be elicited using surveys, great care must be taken in designing the questionnaires.

Suggested Citation

  • Marlies Ahlert & Friedrich Breyer & Lars Schwettmann, 2014. "How You Ask Is What You Get: Willingness-to-Pay for a QALY in Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1384, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1384
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.465601.de/dp1384.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Friedrich Breyer, 2013. "Implicit Versus Explicit Rationing of Health Services," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(01), pages 07-15, April.
    2. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    3. Hammitt, James K & Graham, John D, 1999. "Willingness to Pay for Health Protection: Inadequate Sensitivity to Probability?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 33-62, April.
    4. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    5. Friedrich Breyer, 2013. "Implicit Versus Explicit Rationing of Health Services," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(1), pages 07-15, 04.
    6. repec:ces:ifodic:v:11:y:2013:i:1:p:19078505 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Subir K. Chakrabarti & Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2021. "Minimum wage and restaurant hygiene violations: Evidence from Seattle," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 85-99, January.
    2. Funke, Katja & Hirschauer, Norbert & Peth, Denise & Mußhoff, Oliver & Becker, Oliver Arránz, 2019. "Can personality traits explain compliance behaviour? - A study of compliance with water-protection rules in German agriculture," SocArXiv jnexr_v1, Center for Open Science.
    3. Antony W. Dnes & Raymond Swaray, 2020. "Criminalizing price‐fixing," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(8), pages 1417-1430, December.
    4. Huffman, Wallace & Rousu, M. & Shogren, Jason F. & Tegene, Abebayehu, 1009. "Are U.S. Consumers Tolerant of GM Foods?," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12336, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    5. Fujimoto, Takefumi & Suzuki, Aya, 2021. "Do Fertilizer and Seed Subsidies Strengthen Farmers' Market Participation? the Impact of Tanzania NAIVS on Farmers' Purchase of Agricultural Inputs and Their Maize-Selling Activities," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315044, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Smale, Melinda & Kergna, Alpha & Thériault, Véronique & Assima, Amidou & Keita, Naman, 2016. "Gender, Generation And Agricultural Intensification: A Case Of Two Cereals In The Sudanian Savanna Of Mali," Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Papers 259505, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security (FSP).
    7. Lisette Ibanez & Sébastien Roussel, 2022. "The impact of nature video exposure on pro-environmental behavior: An experimental investigation," Post-Print hal-03847453, HAL.
    8. Laura Levaggi & Rosella Levaggi, 2017. "Rationing in health care provision: a welfare approach," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 235-249, June.
    9. Juliana D. Araujo & Povilas Lastauskas & Chris Papageorgiou, 2017. "Evolution of Bilateral Capital Flows to Developing Countries at Intensive and Extensive Margins," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(7), pages 1517-1554, October.
    10. Stewart, Hayden & Kuchler, Fred & Dong, Diansheng & Cessna, Jerry, 2021. "Examining the Decline in U.S. Per Capita Consumption of Fluid Cow’s Milk, 2003–18," USDA Miscellaneous 316500, United States Department of Agriculture.
    11. Wu, Yu & Sills, Erin O., 2018. "The Evolving Relationship between Market Access and Deforestation on the Amazon Frontier," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274317, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Beck, Ulrik & Bjerge, Benedikte, 2017. "Pro-poor Land Transfers and the Importance of Land Abundance and Ethnicity in The Gambia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 122-140.
    13. Theodoros Skevas & Ray Massey & Jasper Grashuis, 2022. "Farmer adoption and intensity of use of extreme weather adaptation and mitigation strategies: evidence from a sample of Missouri farmers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 1-23, September.
    14. Kondo, M., 2018. "Schooling and Within-Sector Labor Productivity Outcome in Uganda: Joint Estimation of Returns to Education and Labor Supply," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277473, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Marwan Benali & Bernhard Brümmer & Victor Afari‐Sefa, 2018. "Smallholder participation in vegetable exports and age‐disaggregated labor allocation in Northern Tanzania," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(5), pages 549-562, September.
    16. Sheremenko, Ganna & Magnan, Nicholas, 2015. "Gender-specific Risk Preferences and Fertilizer Use in Kenyan Farming Households," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205766, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    17. Stewart, Hayden & Kuchler, Fred & Dong, Diansheng & Cessna, Jerry, 2021. "Examining the Decline in U.S. Per Capita Consumption of Fluid Cow’s Milk, 2003–18," Economic Research Report 327183, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    18. Mandikiana, Brian W., 2021. "Choice and expenditure: A double hurdle model of private tutoring in Qatar," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 1-15.
    19. Koppenberg, Maximilian & Mishra, Ashok K. & Hirsch, Stefan, 2023. "Food Aid and Violent Conflict: A Review of Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 16574, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Liza Jabbour, 2013. "Market thickness, sunk costs, productivity, and the outsourcing decision: an empirical analysis of manufacturing firms in France," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(1), pages 103-134, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Willingness to Pay; QALY; Survey; Germany; EuroVaQ;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1384. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.