Premium
The relative sensitivity of willingness‐to‐pay and time‐trade‐off to changes in health status: an empirical investigation
Author(s) -
Smith Richard D.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.604
Subject(s) - willingness to pay , time trade off , contingent valuation , valuation (finance) , population , economics , quality of life (healthcare) , environmental health , medicine , microeconomics , nursing , finance
This paper directly compares the relative sensitivity of time‐trade‐off (TTO) and willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) values obtained for various levels of change in health status. This was achieved by administering a TTO and WTP survey to a population of 50 subjects, assessing their valuation of various degrees of change in health status. It was found that, overall, WTP is more sensitive than TTO in distinguishing between different dimensions of health at the same nominal level of health status (only four WTP values not significantly different, compared with eight TTO values). In addition, WTP was also more sensitive to differences in quality of life between different levels of health within each dimension (all values significantly different from each other, with TTO yielding three insignificant relationships). These results tentatively suggest, therefore, that WTP seems to be a more sensitive measure of change in health status than TTO. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.