WTP of 91 Eurocents before the safe-handling information was given and an amount of 66 Eurocents
after the safe-handling information was given.
Table 3. Summary statistics of bids in the different treatments
|
Treatment Description____________ |
1 (Without Unclear1 |
2 (With unam- Clear2 |
3 (Without and with |
1 (After p Unclear |
2 roviding inform Clear |
3 ation on decrease Both | |
|
Both Unclear____ |
BothClear | ||||||
|
Auction, Trial 5: Average bid |
91 (94)4 |
61 (69) |
129 (138) |
133 (138) |
66 (71) |
39 (48) |
69 (89) |
|
Median bid |
65 |
50 |
93 |
85 |
50 |
40 |
60 |
|
Second- highest bid |
200 |
150 |
350 |
351 |
150 |
115 |
185 |
|
Standard deviation |
70.59 |
50.82 |
112.78 |
123.31 |
55.32 |
34.87 |
69.39 |
|
No. of zero bids |
1 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
7 |
|
No. of respondents |
26 |
27 |
31 |
31 |
26 |
27 |
31 |
Notes: 1Unclear means that the unambiguous incidence rate is not provided/ 2Clear means that the
unambiguous incidence rate is provided/ 3Both means that the unambiguous incidence rate is not
mentioned before the first 5 trials are made and is then mentioned before the next 5 trials follow/
4Average without zero bids in parenthesis.
The bids in treatment 2, when the participants were provided unambiguous incidence rate
information, are generally lower than the bids in treatment 1, when participants were not provided
unambiguous incidence rate information. In treatment 2, the mean WTP is 61 Eurocents before provision
of safe-handling information and 39 Eurocents after the provision of safe-handling information.
The bids in the “Both” treatment (treatment 3) are higher than in the other two treatments.
Specifically, we obtained a mean WTP of 129 Eurocents per 100 grams before the unambiguous
incidence rate was mentioned (i.e., first set of 5 trials) and 133 Eurocents after they were informed of the
unambiguous incidence rate (i.e., second set of 5 trials).
In our experiment, we asked the participants to state their WTP for a labelled product that is not
consumed by them but by their children. In the exit questionnaire, we told the participants to imagine if
their own health would have been the matter of concern, not their children. We wanted to know if they
would have bid more, equally or less. Interestingly, 47% of the respondents indicated that they would
have stated a lower WTP, 51.8% answered they would have bid the same amount, and only 1.2% said that
they would have paid more. In a related study by Dickie and Messman (2004), a stated preference
approach was used to evaluate parents’ preferences to ease symptoms of acute illnesses for their own and
their children. It was found that parents value illness attributes of their children twice as highly as their
own. This effect was more pronounced for younger children. These results were interpreted to reflect
parental altruism rather than differences between parents and children in initial health or illness costs[17].