Information avoidance and medical screening: A field experiment in China

• Main Authors: LI, Yufeng, MENG, Juanjuan, SONG, Changcheng, ZHENG, Kai
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Anticipation Utility; Information Avoidance; Health Anxiety; Health Screening; Behavioral Economics; Finance and Financial Management; Public Health
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6729; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/7728/viewcontent/Information_Avoidance_Med_Screen_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.