Understanding Demand for COVID-19 Antibody Testing
Marta Serra-Garcia and
Nora Szech
VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association
Abstract:
We study individual demand for COVID-19 antibody tests in an incentivized study on a representative sample of the US population. Almost 2,000 participants trade off obtaining an athome test kit against money. At prices close to zero, 80 percent of individuals want the test. However, this broad support of testing falls sharply with price. Demand decreases by 19 percentage points per $10 price increase. Demand for testing increases with factors related to its potential value, such as age, increased length and strength of protective immunity from antibodies, and greater uncertainty about having had the virus. Willingness to pay for antibody tests also depends on income, ethnicity and political views. Black respondents show significantly lower demand than white and Hispanic respondents, and Trump-supporters demonstrate significantly lower demand for testing. The results suggest that charging even moderate prices for antibody tests could widen health inequalities.
Keywords: Coronavirus; COVID-19; Antibody Tests; Information Preferences; Beliefs; Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 D91 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242410/1/vfs-2021-pid-50132.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding demand for COVID-19 antibody testing (2020) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc21:242410
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().