Information Avoidance and Medical Screening: A Field Experiment in China

Yufeng Li (), Juanjuan Meng (), Changcheng Song () and Kai Zheng ()
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Yufeng Li: Beijing Friendship Hospital Pinggu Campus, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China 101200
Juanjuan Meng: Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China 100871
Changcheng Song: Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, Singapore 178899
Kai Zheng: Department of Informatics, School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697

Management Science, 2021, vol. 67, issue 7, 4252-4272

Abstract: Will individuals, especially high-risk individuals, avoid a disease test because of information avoidance? We conduct a field experiment to investigate this issue. We vary the price of a diabetes test (price experiment) and offer both a diabetes test and a cancer test (disease experiment) after eliciting participants’ subjective beliefs about their disease risk. We find evidence that, first, some people avoid the test even when there is neither a monetary nor a transaction cost, and second, both low- and high-risk individuals select out of the test as the price increases. We explain our findings using three classes of models of anticipatory utility.

Keywords: anticipation utility; information avoidance; health anxiety; health screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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