Vision impairment is the most common disability worldwide and it is untreated in large parts of the developing world. The authors assess the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for eyeglasses among adults in a resource-poor rural setting. They elicit the WTP using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) method. The authors combine this approach with a layaway scheme and a video intervention to probe to what extent liquidity constraints and information influence the WTP. The results show that the average WTP is close to the cost of production for corrective glasses. Nevertheless, the authors find evidence for information constraints. The video intervention raises the WTP for corrective glasses by 16 percent. Evidence of screening effects was not found, that is after 6 months, use is unrelated to the initial WTP.
New publication by Michael Grimm and Renate Hartwig in Health Economics
