Decision makers' and scientists' opinion about contingent valuation and choice experiments for measuring willingness to pay in health care: results from a survey in Germany

OBJECTIVES: Assessment of willingness to pay (WTP) by contingent valuation (CV) and choice experiments (CE) is increasingly performed in economic evaluation of health care. However, the question of whether the methods for measuring WTP are acceptable to decision makers and scientists has remained largely unacknowledged. The aim of this study was to learn more about decision makers' and scientists' opinion concerning these methods. METHODS: An expert group developed a questionnaire consisting of key items that may influence the opinion about CV and CE according to the constructs "attitude toward behavior," "subjective norm," and "behavioral intention" as defined by the Theory of Reasoned Action by Ajzen and Fishbein. In a survey, seventy-seven decision makers representing key institutions in the German healthcare system and forty-two scientists in health economics completed the questionnaire. RESULTS: Scientists and decision makers in particular did not show a high intention to use methods for measuring WTP. Skepticism regarding precision of the methods and subjects' capability to imagine paying an amount of money for a certain health commodity were stated along with the assertion that the hypothetical decision-making scenario was rather a distant reality. Nevertheless, the majority of scientists and decision makers did not state rejection of the methods. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing the probability of using methods for measuring WTP in health care, the hypothetical scenarios should be made more realistic and payment vehicles should be used to help patients relate payment to a real health benefit. Moreover, an intensive discussion on the potential usefulness of CV/CE without excluding ethical concerns in comparison to existing alternatives has to be resumed.