Assisting Technologies in Health and Personal Care and the Willingness to Pay

Assisting technologies in health and personal care are thought of as being of high relevance for private households to meet their specific needs like maintaining an independent living, or staying at home longer despite mental or physical impairments, and even for healthy ageing. There exists a wide range of products of assisting technologies covering the whole range from luxury goods to necessities. However, from a socio-economic point of view it is unclear how to deal with such products. It is assumed that such products will reduce expenditures for health and personal care in the long run. Should such goods therefor be provided by the health care system or will people buy those products when in need.

The evaluation of the current and intended use of such products may provide information to tackle that kind of questions. Information might be important for e.g. decisions about research and the development of health technologies, for regulation purposes in health care systems, for definition of health insurance packages, for treatment or guideline decisions, or for budget allocation decisions.

In this context information about willingness to pay can be used as a measure of health benefits. Therefore, a representative study was done to get empirical information about the willingness-to-pay for assisting technologies of elderly individuals.

The data are taken from a representative survey for Germany in the year 2010 with a standardised questionnaire. The sample size amounts to over 2,000 people of 50 years or older. Beside socio-demographic and psychological variables participants were asked about their income and how much money they would spend for assisting technologies if in need. During the interview four different scenarios were presented to the people to form a clear picture of the characteristics and usefulness of assisting technologies. This was done to demonstrate the features of such products, so that the respondents were familiar with the framing of the decision situation and in order to get realistic answers of the willingness to pay.

The analysis shed some light not only on the amount but also on the dependencies of willingness to pay for assisting technologies. Questions that will be answered are how much will the decision depend on the individual’s need for such technologies holding income constant, and on the age- and income dependencies of willingness to pay.