title: [Willingness to pay for Japanese cedar pollinosis: comparison between pollination and non-pollination seasons].
abstract: Allergic rhinitis is not fatal illness, but its high prevalence and several symptoms result in substantial medical cost. There is increasing interest in the use of economic evaluations in healthcare; therefore, we investigated patients' willingness to pay (WTP) for prevention and cure from Japanese cedar pollinosis (JCP), and compared WTP values assessed in non-pollination season (June 1998) and pollination season (February-March 2003). Japanese economic woes got worse in 2003 than in 1998. Patients were randomly selected from ENT clinical sites in Osaka, 175 and 645 patients completed WTP questionnaire in 1998 and 2003, respectively. WTP value was lower in 2003 than in 1998, which related to part-time employees and housewives' reducing WTP. Declining WTP value did not associated with the differences in patient characteristics between 1998 and 2003 including age, duration of disease, nasal symptom severity and comorbid condition. These results show that we have to take employment status into account in economic evaluations. Decline in WTP for JCP in 2003 was strongly affected by Japanese sluggish economy, and the WTP seemed to be stable value in individual patients.
authors.affiliation: School of Allied Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Osaka University.
authors.forename: Chieko
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kakutani
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ogino
authors.forename: Morihiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Irifune
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kikumori
authors.forename: Ritsu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Seo
authors.forename: Mariko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takeda
authors.forename: Akiko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tamaki
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Baba
authors.forename: Yoshihiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dake
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.forename: Tadao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Enomoto
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004651:Employment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology; D011058:Pollen; D006255:Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal / Q000191:economics*; D012621:Seasons