Assessing households' willingness to pay for an immediate pandemic influenza vaccination programme

This study sought to contribute to the existing literature on pandemic influenza vaccination studies by providing additional evidences of households' willingness to pay (WTP) for protection against influenza during a pandemic situation from North America.

A standard dichotomous-choice contingent valuation survey was designed and completed in a sample of 306 individuals living in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada.

This study shows that, on average, households are willing to pay $417.35 for immediate pandemic influenza (H1N1) vaccination. Results show that the vaccine price, age, gender, occupation, organisation, annual family income, receiving annual flu shot, having additional insurance, having someone with a serious illness in the house, knowledge about pandemics, trusting official information on pandemics, supporting government expenditure, and rating government pandemic planning have significant effects on the decision to accept the vaccine bids.

The results reconfirm the findings of similar studies that influenza vaccine programmes are highly cost-effective despite the high programme cost, because people's WTP (benefits) for this programme is much higher than the actual costs. Pandemic influenza vaccination programmes should consider the demographic and economic status of the target population as such characteristics have significant impacts on the benefits that people place on such programmes.