Cawley John
Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, 124 MVR Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Econ Hum Biol. 2008 Jul;6(2):281-92. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2008.05.003. Epub 2008 Jun 6.
Several recent surveys have asked Americans whether they support policies to reduce childhood obesity. There is reason for skepticism of such surveys because people are not confronted with the tax costs of such policies when they are asked whether they support them. This paper uses contingent valuation (CV), a method frequently used to estimate people's willingness to pay (WTP) for goods or services not transacted in markets, applied to unique survey data from New York State to estimate the willingness to pay to reduce childhood obesity. The willingness to pay data correlate in predictable ways with respondent characteristics. The mean WTP for a 50% reduction in childhood obesity is $46.41 (95% CI: $33.45, $59.15), which implies a total WTP by New York State residents of $690.6 million (95% CI: $497.7, $880.15), which is less than that implied by previous surveys that did not use CV methods but greater than current spending on policies to reduce childhood obesity and greater than the estimated savings in external costs. The findings provide policymakers with useful information about taxpayers' support for, and preferred budget for, anti-obesity policies.
最近的几项调查询问了美国人是否支持减少儿童肥胖的政策。对这类调查持怀疑态度是有原因的，因为当人们被问及是否支持这些政策时，他们并没有面对这些政策的税收成本。本文采用条件估值法（CV），这是一种常用于估计人们对市场上未交易的商品或服务的支付意愿（WTP）的方法，应用于来自纽约州的独特调查数据，以估计为减少儿童肥胖而支付的意愿。支付意愿数据与受访者特征以可预测的方式相关。将儿童肥胖率降低50%的平均支付意愿为46.41美元（95%置信区间：33.45美元，59.15美元），这意味着纽约州居民的总支付意愿为6.906亿美元（95%置信区间：4.977亿美元，8.8015亿美元），这低于之前未使用条件估值法的调查所暗示的数额，但高于目前用于减少儿童肥胖政策的支出，也高于估计的外部成本节省。这些发现为政策制定者提供了有关纳税人对反肥胖政策的支持以及首选预算的有用信息。
