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Willingness to Pay and QALYs: What Can We Learn about Valuing Foodborne Risk?
Author(s) -
Andersson Henrik,
Hammitt James K.,
Sundström Kristian
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/1477-9552.12109
Subject(s) - contingent valuation , willingness to pay , valuation (finance) , actuarial science , economics , quality adjusted life year , value (mathematics) , value of life , cost effectiveness , statistics , microeconomics , operations management , mathematics , finance
This paper examines the value of reducing foodborne risk. Previous research on the valuation of health risk has been dominated by the study of mortality risk. However, in most cases foodborne illnesses are non‐fatal, so we focus on individuals' preferences for reducing morbidity risk, while also including a realistic, if remote, chance of death. We use a contingent valuation method on a Swedish sample and we estimate a value of a statistical illness consistent with previous findings in the literature. We also examine how willingness to pay (WTP) varies with the expected change in quality‐adjusted life years (QALYs) and estimate the WTP per QALY. We find that WTP increases with, though less than proportionally to, a change in QALYs. However, our results also suggest that respondents may have found it difficult to evaluate compound risks of both morbidity and mortality simultaneously.