IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v67y2008i5p883-889.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparison of two methods of eliciting time preference for future health states

Author

Listed:
  • van der Pol, Marjon
  • Cairns, John

Abstract

Mean estimates of time preference rates for health vary widely in the literature. If these studies are to inform discounting practice and analyses of health-affecting behaviour, it is crucial to understand why this is the case. One reason for the variation in time preference rates is the use of different elicitation methods. The influence of elicitation method has received little attention in the time preference literature. This study compares directly an open-ended and a closed-ended method. Both private and social time preferences for health are elicited. The closed-ended method produced much lower mean rates than the open-ended method. This is in contrast to the contingent valuation literature which shows that closed-ended methods produce higher estimates of willingness to pay than open-ended methods. That the elicitation methods produce different mean estimates is clearly worrying if the interest is in estimating the true time preference rate. However, the results of this study suggest that if the interest is in testing different types of time preferences or investigating the relationship between time preference and individual characteristics then the choice of elicitation method is less important.

Suggested Citation

  • van der Pol, Marjon & Cairns, John, 2008. "Comparison of two methods of eliciting time preference for future health states," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 883-889, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:5:p:883-889
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(08)00246-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Carson & Nicholas Flores & Norman Meade, 2001. "Contingent Valuation: Controversies and Evidence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 19(2), pages 173-210, June.
    2. Hugh Gravelle & Werner Brouwer & Louis Niessen & Maarten Postma & Frans Rutten, 2007. "Discounting in economic evaluations: stepping forward towards optimal decision rules," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 307-317, March.
    3. Cairns, John & Van der Pol, Marjon, 1997. "Constant and decreasing timing aversion for saving lives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(11), pages 1653-1659, December.
    4. Frederick, Shane, 2003. "Measuring Intergenerational Time Preference: Are Future Lives Valued Less?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 39-53, January.
    5. Dorte Gyrd-Hansen, 2002. "Comparing the results of applying different methods of eliciting time preferences for health," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 3(1), pages 10-16, March.
    6. Karl Claxton & Mark Sculpher & Anthony Culyer & Chris McCabe & Andrew Briggs & Ron Akehurst & Martin Buxton & John Brazier, 2006. "Discounting and cost‐effectiveness in NICE – stepping back to sort out a confusion," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 1-4, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marjon van der Pol, 2011. "Health, education and time preference," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(8), pages 917-929, August.
    2. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.
    3. Arthur E. Attema & Werner B.F. Brouwer, 2014. "Deriving Time Discounting Correction Factors For Tto Tariffs," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 410-425, April.
    4. Flynn, Terry Nicholas & Louviere, Jordan J. & Peters, Tim J. & Coast, Joanna, 2010. "Using discrete choice experiments to understand preferences for quality of life. Variance-scale heterogeneity matters," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 1957-1965, June.

    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. Weatherly, Helen & Drummond, Michael & Claxton, Karl & Cookson, Richard & Ferguson, Brian & Godfrey, Christine & Rice, Nigel & Sculpher, Mark & Sowden, Amanda, 2009. "Methods for assessing the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions: Key challenges and recommendations," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(2-3), pages 85-92, December.
    2. Mike Paulden & Anthony J. Culyer, 2010. "Does Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Discriminate against Patients with Short Life Expectancy?," Working Paper series 41_10, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    3. Arthur E. Attema & Werner B. F. Brouwer & Karl Claxton, 2018. "Discounting in Economic Evaluations," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 36(7), pages 745-758, July.
    4. Robberstad, Bjarne, 2005. "Estimation of private and social time preferences for health in northern Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1597-1607, October.
    5. M. Parouty & H. Le & D. Krooshof & M. Postma, 2014. "Differential Time Preferences for Money and Quality of Life," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 411-419, April.
    6. Mareike Schad & Jürgen John, 2012. "Towards a social discount rate for the economic evaluation of health technologies in Germany: an exploratory analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(2), pages 127-144, April.
    7. Mike Paulden & Anthony J Culyer, 2010. "Does cost-effectiveness analysis discriminate against patients with short life expectancy? Matters of logic and matters of context," Working Papers 055cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    8. Erik Nord, 2011. "Discounting future health benefits: the poverty of consistency arguments," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 16-26, January.
    9. Karl Claxton & Mike Paulden & Hugh Gravelle & Werner Brouwer & Anthony J. Culyer, 2011. "Discounting and decision making in the economic evaluation of health‐care technologies," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 2-15, January.
    10. N. J. Welton & A. E. Ades & D. M. Caldwell & T. J. Peters, 2008. "Research prioritization based on expected value of partial perfect information: a case‐study on interventions to increase uptake of breast cancer screening," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(4), pages 807-841, October.
    11. Ana Bobinac & Werner Brouwer & Job van Exel, 2011. "Discounting future health gains: an empirical enquiry into the influence of growing life expectancy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 111-119, January.
    12. Pamela Wicker & John C. Whitehead & Bruce K. Johnson & Daniel S. Mason, 2016. "Willingness-To-Pay For Sporting Success Of Football Bundesliga Teams," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 34(3), pages 446-462, July.
    13. Franz Hackl & Gerald J. Pruckner, 2005. "Warm glow, free‐riding and vehicle neutrality in a health‐related contingent valuation study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(3), pages 293-306, March.
    14. Marieka M. Klawitter & C. Leigh Anderson & Mary Kay Gugerty, 2013. "Savings And Personal Discount Rates In A Matched Savings Program For Low-Income Families," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 31(3), pages 468-485, July.
    15. Rodríguez, Elsa Mirta M. & Lacaze, María Victoria & Lupín, Beatriz, 2007. "Willingness to pay for organic food in Argentina: evidence from a consumer survey," Nülan. Deposited Documents 1300, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, Centro de Documentación.
    16. Van Houtven, George L. & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Usmani, Faraz & Yang, Jui-Chen, 2017. "What are Households Willing to Pay for Improved Water Access? Results from a Meta-Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 126-135.
    17. Jean-Daniel Rinaudo & Stéphanie Aulong, 2014. "Defining Groundwater Remediation Objectives with Cost-benefit Analysis: Does It Work?," Post-Print hal-00934930, HAL.
    18. Turpie, Jane K., 2003. "The existence value of biodiversity in South Africa: how interest, experience, knowledge, income and perceived level of threat influence local willingness to pay," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 199-216, September.
    19. Kontodimopoulos, Nick & Niakas, Dimitris, 2008. "An estimate of lifelong costs and QALYs in renal replacement therapy based on patients' life expectancy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 85-96, April.
    20. Dienes, Christian, 2015. "Actions and intentions to pay for climate change mitigation: Environmental concern and the role of economic factors," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 122-129.

    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:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:5:p:883-889. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Nithya Sathishkumar). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.