Social Preferences and the Willingness to Pay for Preventative Health Care: Evidence from Field Experiments

Abstract

This dissertation explores behavioral incentives generated by individuals making choices in peer group settings in order to assess whether these incentives can be harnessed towards improving people’s willingness to invest in undersubscribed preventative health care products. The first chapter uses a randomized field experiment to explore whether increasing the visibility of individual choices to peer groups impacts willingness to pay for water treatment products, by triggering the desire to engage in socially desirable behavior in public. The second chapter uses a randomized field experiment to analyze if sequential decision making in peer group settings exerts an impact on individual willingness to pay for first-movers owing to leadership effects, and compares outcomes between randomly appointed, self-selected and natural leaders. The third chapter compares altruistic product subsidies - which can be shared with other individuals - against individual subsidies in generating greater take up of water treatment products, and assesses the likelihood of individuals selecting into altruistic subsidies if sorting out of these arrangements is allowed.