Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, No.38 Tongyan Road, Jinnan District, Tianjin, 300350, China.
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen University Town, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
BMC Geriatr. 2022 Jan 12;22(1):49. doi: 10.1186/s12877-021-02690-0.
Elderly care service projects (ECSPs) aim to provide care services with the help of market forces on the supply side to satisfy the huge demand of the elderly. Subsidies play an important role in motivating the investors to invest in the ECSPs immediately. The optimal subsidy scheme should balance the policy costs and the investors' interests.
Based on the policy background of China, this study applied the real options theory to compare the effects of construction subsidy and operating subsidy on achieving policy goals from the perspective of uncertain actual demand. It introduced numerical examples to identify the optimal subsidy scheme and embedded the data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) to verify the uncertainty of actual demand.
The results showed that in the context of uncertain actual demand, operating subsidy has greater advantages in reducing investment thresholds, saving subsidy costs and increasing spillover values. Moreover, a sound quality supervision system, a differentiated operating subsidy scheme and a sustainable growth market demand environment are conducive to increasing the long-term interests of the government and the investors.
The study emphasized the importance of subsidy selection in the context of uncertain actual demand, and provided a practical reference for policy designers in China and other developing countries to choose the optimal subsidy scheme for the ECSPs.
老年护理服务项目（ECSPs）旨在通过供给侧的市场力量提供护理服务，以满足老年人的巨大需求。补贴在激励投资者立即投资 ECSPs 方面发挥着重要作用。最优补贴方案应平衡政策成本和投资者利益。
基于中国的政策背景，本研究应用实物期权理论，从实际需求不确定的角度比较了建设补贴和运营补贴对实现政策目标的影响。引入数值示例以确定最优补贴方案，并嵌入中国长寿纵向研究（CLHLS）的数据以验证实际需求的不确定性。
结果表明，在实际需求不确定的情况下，运营补贴在降低投资门槛、节省补贴成本和增加溢出价值方面具有更大的优势。此外，健全的质量监管体系、差异化的运营补贴方案和可持续增长的市场需求环境，有利于增加政府和投资者的长期利益。
本研究强调了在实际需求不确定的情况下补贴选择的重要性，为中国和其他发展中国家的政策制定者选择 ECSPs 的最优补贴方案提供了实践参考。
