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Choice experiments in health: the good, the bad, the ugly and toward a brighter future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

JORDAN J. LOUVIERE  and
EMILY LANCSAR
JORDAN J. LOUVIERE*
Affiliation:
Professor of Marketing, Executive Director, Centre for the Study of Choice, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
EMILY LANCSAR
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economics, Business School and Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, UK
*
*Corresponding author: Jordan J. Louviere, Professor of Marketing, Executive Director, Centre for the Study of Choice, University of Technology, Sydney, PO BOX 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia. Email: Jordan.Louviere@uts.edu.au
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Abstract:

Compared to many applied areas of economics, health economics has a strong tradition in eliciting and using stated preferences (SP) in policy analysis. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are one SP method increasingly used in this area. Literature on DCEs in health and more generally has grown rapidly since the mid-1990s. Applications of DCEs in health have come a long way, but to date few have been ‘best practice’, in part because ‘best practice’ has been somewhat of a moving target. The purpose of this paper is to briefly survey the history of DCEs and the state of current knowledge, identify and discuss knowledge gaps, and suggest potentially fruitful areas for future research to fill such gaps with the aim of moving the application of DCEs in health economics closer to best practice.

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Article
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Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 527 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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