Economic evaluation of healthcare technology improving the quality of social life: the case of assistive technology for the disabled and elderly

ABSTRACT

Public investments in healthcare technology for the disabled and elderly to improve the quality of social life have been vigorous, but the economic evaluation of the assistive technology is still lacking. Under this circumstance, the purpose of this study is to analyse the socio-economic value of developing assistive technologies with the potential to improve the quality of social life, especially for disabled and elderly individuals. Based on a survey of 400 respondents, the spike model, a special form of the contingent valuation method (CVM) is applied to assess the value of assistive technologies. In Korea, a household’s willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the development of assistive technologies is US$4.26 per year, on average, in the form of a government-levied tax; although many people express zero WTP for the development of these technologies, people with higher household savings, higher levels of education and higher levels of charity donations have a higher WTP for the development of assistive technology. We conclude that although assistive technologies have considerable economic value many people express zero WTP for the development of these technologies. Therefore, political and social educational efforts are necessary to reach social consensus on the government investment in such technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Assistive technology
• contingent valuation method
• economic value
• willingness-to-pay
• spike model

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D12
• H41
• I10

Notes

¹ http://www.oecd.org/els/healthpoliciesanddata/oecdhealthdata2012-frequentlyrequesteddata.htm

² We used a taxation scheme as the payment vehicle and let the respondents recognize that these developing assistive technologies will be led by government via taxes. Based on the estimated economic value, the budget planning for the related policy will be evaluated. In this context, the protest bids are assumed to be zero WTP responses.

³ According to Loomis and González-Cabán (1997) and Loomis et al. (2011), the estimated WTP from CVM is statistically independent of model specification and survey method.

⁴ http://www.kostat.go.kr