Public Preferences and Willingness to Pay for a COVID-19 Vaccine in Iran: A Discrete Choice Experiment

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a major international threat and vaccination is the most robust strategy to terminate this crisis. It is helpful for policymakers to be aware of community preferences about vaccines. The present study aims to investigate the public's preferences and willingness to pay for the COVID-19 vaccine in Iran.

This research is a cross-sectional study performed using a discrete choice experiment for a sample of the public population of several provinces of Iran in 2021. The samples were divided into two groups: one group expressed their preferences regarding the vaccine's attributes, and another group expressed their preferences regarding prioritizing individuals to get the vaccine. The discrete choice experiment design included five attributes including effectiveness, risk of severe complications, price, location of vaccine production, and duration of protection related to preferences for vaccine selection and six attributes including age, underlying diseases, employment in the healthcare sector, the rate of virus spread, the necessary job, and cost to the community related to preferences for prioritizing individuals to get the vaccine. A total of 715 individuals completed the questionnaire. The conditional logit regression model was used to analyze the discrete choice experiment data. Willingness to pay for each attribute was also calculated.

The willingness to pay for the COVID-19 vaccine with 90% (70%) efficacy, the risk of severe complications for 1 (5) person per one million people, imported (domestic) vaccine, and 24-month (12-month) duration of protection attributes was about US$71 (US$37). The preference for vaccination for respondents was enhanced by increasing the efficacy and the duration of vaccine protection and decreasing complications and costs. The likelihood of prioritizing individuals to get a vaccination was increased for a person with an underlying disease, employment in the healthcare sector, the necessary job for the community, the high potential for virus spread in the community, and the high cost of death to the community. The age variable was not statistically significant for prioritizing individuals to get the vaccine.

In the setting of the COVID-19 vaccination program, the public's preferences identified in this study should be considered. The obtained results provide useful information for policymakers to identify individual and social values for an appropriate vaccination strategy.