The trade-off between equity and efficiency: A discrete choice experiment to elicit population opinion
Key objective:
To investigate the trade-offs people are willing to make between total health gain and targetting gain to particular social groups
Standard economic evaluation considers outcomes to be of equal value irrespective of who they accrue to. However, it is plausible that, under certain circumstances, society may decide that an outcome in one group (such as the more disadvantaged) may be relatively of greater importance. While people such as Alan Williams have highlighted the possibility of weighting outcomes in economic evaluation according to societal preferences using equity weights, this has not been undertaken on a large scale. Discrete choice experiments may be a useful way forward towards doing this. They allow investigation of complicated preferences, estimating both the effect of changing individual characteristics, but also the way that characteristics interact in the decision-making process.
Funding from the Faculty of Business has provided the opportunity to undertake a pilot investigating the issue. The survey was developed through use of small convenient samples, and then piloted using an online representative sample of the Australian population. The advantage of using an online panel is that a larger sample can be reached than through more labour-intensive methods, allowing more complicated designs. The experiment suggested individuals were willing to discriminate between people, particularly favouring non-smokers.
This study was presented at AHES, Adelaide 2008 and IHEA, Beijing 2009
Funding source
Faculty of Business Research Grant
CHERE staff
Richard Norman, Stephen Goodall, Jane Hall
