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Universal Basic Income (UBI) is proposed as a means of redistributing resources to reduce the UK’s health divide. While vital modelling work suggests UBI can positively act on population health and health inequalities, a rigorous, mixed-method study of public values is needed. This would assess a) whether the costs of UBI are justifiable in terms of the value placed on improving population health (outcomes) and on reducing health inequalities (distribution) in the context of comparator income-based policies (e.g. a Minimum Income Guarantee, increasing Universal Credit, Real Living Wage, targeted basic income), and b) whether policies are supported in ideological terms. Although systematic review evidence suggests the UK public are averse to inequalities in health between socioeconomic groups, the scenarios assessed are abstracted from real policy proposals. Evidence is lacking on the trade-offs the public are willing to make with respect to differing magnitudes (and distributions) of costs and benefits across a range of income-based policies. Research combining quantitative data from stated preference methods with qualitative data from deliberative methods is needed to assess whether different income-based policies are worth their costs to society as well as the social legitimacy of different policy instruments. Different models of UBI and comparator policies will result in different distributions of health and costs that citizens may value more or less. Stated preference methods, importantly, present respondents with trade-offs, permit the elicitation of monetary values, provide insight on the direction and intensity of public support and can inform a full cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Policies can operate in different ways, however. For example: targeting the worst-off versus universal payments, or unconditional versus conditional payments, and public support for various policy attributes is likely to rest on fundamental ideological stances. So, in addition to measuring public values through stated preference methods, facilitated public deliberation between citizens with different views is needed to engage in reasoning and reach policy recommendations. Working at the intersection of public health, (health) economics, political science, and social policy this research will undertake the developmental work necessary to inform a large-scale study on public values for UBI and competing policy options. Stated preference and deliberative methods both require policy scenarios of the good being valued and deliberated. This entails describing different UBI models and comparator policies in terms of outcomes (e.g., population health, health inequality and income) and attributes (e.g., conditionality, targeting, cost). Use of stated preference methods in this area presents methodological complexities (e.g., identifying winners and losers, self- versus other-regarding preferences, use of a money-metric). Development work is needed to: identify the range of relevant policy options and cover the range of policy attributes; set out a valuation framework to guide the design of stated preference survey methods and analysis; design and pilot-test stated preference methods.

It can be assumed that higher SARS-CoV-2 infection risk is associated with higher COVID-19 vaccination intentions, although evidence is scarce. In this large and representative survey of 6007 adults aged 18–64 years and residing in France, 8.1% (95% CI, 7.5–8.8) reported a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in December 2020, with regional variations according to an East–West gradient (p &lt, 0.0001). In participants without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was substantial, including 41.3% (95% CI, 39.8–42.8) outright refusal of COVID-19 vaccination. Taking into account five characteristics of the first approved vaccines (efficacy, duration of immunity, safety, country of the vaccine manufacturer, and place of administration) as well as the initial setting of the mass vaccination campaign in France, COVID-19 vaccine acceptance would reach 43.6% (95% CI, 43.0–44.1) at best among working-age adults without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. COVID-19 vaccine acceptance was primarily driven by vaccine characteristics, sociodemographic and attitudinal factors. Considering the region of residency as a proxy of the likelihood of getting infected, our study findings do not support the assumption that SARS-CoV-2 infection risk is associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptance.

Consumers’ food choices often deviate from rationality. This paper explores whether deviations from rationality impact home-grown values elicited using either bid- or choice-based value elicitation techniques. The paper focuses on second-price Vickrey auctions and discrete choice experiments, which are widely used to value innovative private goods and the welfare benefits of policy interventions. The paper reports the results of an experiment that combines induced value and home-grown value elicitation procedures. Home-grown values are elicited for a public food policy. The experiment has two treatments that differ in the elicitation technique: second-price Vickrey auction and discrete choice experiment. For each technique, induced-value elicitation procedures are used to measure subjects’ deviations from rationality. Deviations from rationality are more likely in the second-price Vickrey auction. Subjects who behave irrationally have higher home-grown values than rational subjects in the second-price Vickrey auction. The impact of deviations from rationality is weaker in the discrete choice experiment., Bio-based and Applied Economics, Vol. 8 No. 2 (2019)