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A comparison between willingness to pay and willingness to give up time

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Abstract

We compared the willingness-to-pay and willingness to give up time methods to assess preferences for digital subtraction angiography (DSA), computed tomography angiography (CTA) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Respondents were hypertensive patients suspected of having renal artery stenosis. Data were gathered using telephone interviews. Both the willingness-to-pay and willingness to give up time methods revealed that patients preferred CTA to MRA in order to avoid DSA. The agreement between willingness-to-pay and willingness to give up time responses was high (kappa 0.65–0.85). The willingness-to-pay method yielded relatively more protest answers (12%) as compared to willingness to give up time (2%). So, our results provided evidence for the comparability of willingness to pay and willingness to give up time. The high percentage of protest answers on the willingness-to-pay questions raises questions with respect to the application of the willingness-to-pay method in a broad decision-making context. On the other hand, the strength of willingness-to-pay is that the method directly arrives at a monetary measure well founded in economic theory, whereas the willingness to give up time method requires conversion to monetary units.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support for this study was provided entirely by a grant from the Dutch Health Care Insurance Board (grant number OG 97-003). The funding agreement ensured the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, writing and publishing the report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Technology Assessment, University Hospital Maastricht, PO Box 5800, 6202 AZ , Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Debby van Helvoort-Postulart, Carmen D. Dirksen & Alfons G. H. Kessels

  2. Department of Radiology, University Hospital Maastricht and Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Jos M. A. van Engelshoven

  3. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Department of Radiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    M. G. Myriam Hunink

  4. Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    M. G. Myriam Hunink

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  1. Debby van Helvoort-Postulart
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  2. Carmen D. Dirksen
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  3. Alfons G. H. Kessels
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  4. Jos M. A. van Engelshoven
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Correspondence to Debby van Helvoort-Postulart.

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van Helvoort-Postulart, D., Dirksen, C.D., Kessels, A.G.H. et al. A comparison between willingness to pay and willingness to give up time. Eur J Health Econ 10, 81–91 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-008-0105-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-008-0105-6

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