For Me or for My Relatives? Approximating Self-Protection and Local Altruistic Motivations Underlying Preferences for Public Health Policies Using Risk Perception Metrics

• Published in: Value in health Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 99 - 103
• Main Authors: Daniel, Aemiro Melkamu, Mouter, Niek, Chorus, Caspar G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.01.2023; International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc
• Subjects: Altruism; Benchmarking; Communicable Disease Control; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - prevention & control; discrete choice; Health Policy; Humans; local altruism; Methodology; Motivation; Perception; risk perception; self-protection; discrete choice; health policy; local altruism; self-protection; risk perception
• ISSN: 1098-3015; 1524-4733
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jval.2022.05.017

Research efforts evaluating the role of altruistic motivations behind health policy support are usually based on direct preference elicitation procedures, which may be biased. We propose an indirect measurement approach to approximate self-protection–related and altruistic motivations underlying preferences for public health policies. Our new approach relies on associations between on the one hand decision makers’ perceived health risk for themselves and for close relatives and on the other hand their observed preferences for health policies that reduce such risks. The approach allows to make a rough distinction between health-related self-protection and local altruistic motives behind preferences for health policies. We illustrate our approach using data obtained from a discrete choice experiment in the context of policies to relax coronavirus-related lockdown measures in The Netherlands. Our results show that the approach is able to uncover that (1) people who think they have a high chance of experiencing health risks from a COVID-19 infection are more willing to accept a societal or personal sacrifice, (2) people with a higher health risk perception for their relatives have a higher willingness to accept sacrifices than people with a higher health risk perception for themselves, and (3) people who perceive that they have a high risk of dying of COVID-19 have a higher willingness to accept sacrifices than those anticipating less severe consequences of COVID-19. Our method offers a useful proxy metric to distinguish health-related self-protection and local altruism as drivers of citizens’ responses to healthcare policies. •Directly asking about selfish or altruistic motivations behind support for healthcare policies is known to generate unreliable results.•We propose a metric that may serve as an indirect proxy measurement, by associating risk perceptions with policy support.•The method is tested and illustrated in the context of COVID-19 policies.•We find that both self-protection and local altruism play a role in driving acceptance of COVID-19 policies.