Women’s Willingness to Pay for Mammography Screening under Two Medical Information Scenarios

Abstract

Objective. Secondary prevention of breast cancer (BC) helps diagnose the disease in the early stages and prevent disease progression. World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society consider early diagnosis as the best way to control BC. Mammography screening is the most sensitive and specific test that can be conducted along with the clinical examination for the early diagnosis of BC. However, like other tests, mammography is not a perfect test. The purpose of the present study is to measure willingness to pay (WTP) for mammography among a sample of women by providing each of them one of two scenarios describing medical information on the test. Methods. 450 women aged 35–55 years were assigned randomly into two groups of equal numbers in a quasi-experimental study conducted in Tabriz city, Iran. Each group was presented with one of the two designed scenarios. First scenario described the basic medical information on mammography as a good test of BC screening. The alternative scenario described some information on potential diagnostic errors of the mammography result alongside basic medical information about this test. The double bounded dichotomous choice method was used to extract women’s WTP for mammography under each scenario. Results. Based on the official currency exchange rate of 37000 IRR/USD, the mean WTP for BC screening with mammography was estimated as 30.5$ in the group receiving basic medical information and 26.8$ in the other group. However, the result of regression analysis revealed receiving information on potential diagnostic errors of mammography result did not lead to significant higher WTP for the test. The WTP for mammography raised significantly among older women, employed women, and those with higher level of education. Conclusion. The result of our study suggests that providing women with information about the potential diagnostic errors of mammography may not be correlated to economic value they give to this test. However, women with different individual status may reveal different economic value on mammography.