Conjoint analysis of French and German parents' willingness to pay for meningococcal vaccine.

Objective: To estimate the willingness of parents in France and Germany to pay for meningococcal conjugate vaccines for their teenage children.

Methods: A conjoint analysis survey was administered to parents who had received counselling on the nature and risks of meningococcal disease in young people. In each country, half were randomly assigned to view a video with graphical depictions of the effects of meningococcaemia. Subjects were then shown a series of 18 sets of three vaccine descriptions. Each description listed the price of a hypothetical vaccine (range 15-304 euro; 2001 values), the duration of protection, and the number of serogroups of the bacteria covered. The survey asked which vaccine they preferred and whether they would buy it. Conditional logit and generalised linear-random effects logit models assessed the effect of product attributes, personal background and video viewership on the probability of indicating a purchase.

Results: 92.6% of subjects would purchase at least one of the vaccines they encountered. Price elasticity ranged from -1.20 (France) to -2.48 (Germany). Exposure to graphical depictions of disease consequences negligibly increased the overall willingness to purchase vaccine in French participants, but lowered the overall willingness in German participants.

Conclusion: In Germany and France, where there is still limited out-of-pocket health spending, the majority of sampled respondents stated that they would purchase meningococcal vaccines with their own money.