Prof. Dr. Michael Grimm / Renate Hartwig

All Eyes on the Price: An Assessment of the Willingness-to-Pay for Eyeglasses in rural Burkina Faso

Health Economics (United Kingdom) | 2022


  • Abstract

    Vision impairment is the most common disability worldwide and it is untreated in large parts of the developing world. We assess the willingness-topay (WTP) for eyeglasses among adults in a resource-poor rural setting. We elicit the WTP using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) method. We combine this approach with a layaway scheme and a video intervention to probe to what extent liquidity constraints and information influence the WTP. Our results show that the average WTP is close to the cost of production for corrective glasses. Nevertheless, we find evidence for information constraints. Our video intervention raises the WTP for corrective glasses by 16 percent. We do not find evidence of screening effects, i.e. after six months, use is unrelated to the initial WTP.

    Journal

    Health Economics (United Kingdom)

    Volume

    31

    Number

    7

    Pages

    1347-1367

    Prof. Dr. Michael Grimm

    Prof. Dr. Michael Grimm

    University of Passau



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