Estimating the Willingness to Pay for Community Healthcare Insurance in Rural Nigeria

41 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2008 Last revised: 9 Nov 2008

See all articles by John Ataguba

John Ataguba

University of Cape Town (UCT) - Faculty of Health Sciences

Ementa Hyacinth Ichoku

University of Nigeria - Department of Economics

William Fonta

University of Nigeria

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 10, 2008

Abstract

Health care financing in Nigeria is dominated by private out-of-pocket payment that is not affordable to the poor. This has greatly reduced access to quality health care for the predominantly rural poor. Insurance schemes as options for increasing access to health care services have not received considerable attention in Nigeria. In this regard, a community health prepayment scheme is proposed, and the Contingent Valuation Method is used to investigate the willingness of rural households to pay for this scheme. Contributing through agricultural commodities produced statistically higher estimates than through direct cash. Also, by incorporating uncertainty in responses using the Random Valuation Model, higher contribution amounts were obtained. This provides an option for its use in healthcare contingent valuation studies where respondents are uncertain about their true responses. The groups that are willing to pay lesser amounts into the scheme as compared with their counterparts are women, the less educated, and the less wealthy households.

Keywords: Health care financing, Prepayment scheme, Contingent Valuation, Willingness to pay, Dichotomous choice, Uncertainty, Random valuation, Stochastic Payment Card

JEL Classification: C35, D81, I10, I38

Suggested Citation

Ataguba, John and Ichoku, Ementa Hyacinth and Fonta, William, Estimating the Willingness to Pay for Community Healthcare Insurance in Rural Nigeria (September 10, 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1266163 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1266163

John Ataguba (Contact Author)

University of Cape Town (UCT) - Faculty of Health Sciences ( email )

South Africa

Ementa Hyacinth Ichoku

University of Nigeria - Department of Economics ( email )

Department of Economics,
University of Nigeria Nsukka
Nsukka, Enugu State 4100002
Nigeria

William Fonta

University of Nigeria ( email )

184 ogui Road Enugu
Department of Science Education, Chemistry option
Nsukka, DE Enugu State 410001
Nigeria

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