HEALTH ECONOMICS Health Econ 12: 891–894 (2003) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI:10.1002/hec.847 EDITORIAL Willingness to paymethods in health care: a sceptical view

Recently, several experts in stated preference willingness to pay (WTP) methods have advo-cated greater use of these methods to facilitate cost–benefit analysis in health care [1–3]. The suggestion is that health economics lags behind other areas of economics that have embraced these methods, in particular environmental economics. A small but growing number of stated pre-ference WTP studies have been conducted in the health field [4,5]. Two main methods have been employed: the ‘contingent valuation method’ (CVM) and ‘choice experiments ’ (CE) – the method formerly known as conjoint analysis. These methods have generally been used to set