Willingness to pay for policies to reduce health risks from COVID-19: Evidence from U.S. professional sports

Brad Humphreys, Gary Wagner, John Whitehead and Pamela Wicker
Additional contact information
Gary Wagner: University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Pamela Wicker: Bielefeld University

No 22-06, Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Abstract: Airborne transmission of COVID-19 increased the need for health policies to reduce transmission in congregate settings associated with minimal risk before the pandemic. While a large literature estimates tradeoffs between policies designed to reduce negative health outcomes, no empirical research addresses consumer willingness to pay for health policies designed to reduce airborne virus transmission. Using survey data from 1,381 fans of professional sports teams, we estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for reduced likelihood of coronavirus transmission through mask and social distancing policies using a stated preference approach. The results indicate increased attendance likelihood if the venue requires masks and limits attendance, with significant heterogeneity in WTP across risk scenarios and sports. We characterize consumers as casual fans who prefer a mask requirement but are indifferent to capacity constraints, strong fans who are anti-maskers and prefer capacity constraints, and a second group of casual fans with positive WTP under both mask and limited capacity requirements. Casual fans’ WTP for masking, $38 per NBA game attended, is more than double their WTP for capacity constraints only. Strong fans’ WTP for attending capacity constrained NBA games was $490, more than 400% higher than the pre-pandemic average WTP of $105.

Keywords: Discrete choice experiment; Stated preferences; Willingness-to-pay; Health policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 M31 Q51 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-spo
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Journal Article: Willingness to pay for policies to reduce health risks from COVID‐19: Evidence from U.S. professional sports (2023)
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