title: Willingness-to-accept pharmaceutical retail inconvenience: evidence from a contingent choice experiment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Restrictions on retail purchases of pseudoephedrine are one regulatory approach to reduce the social costs of methamphetamine production and use, but may impose costs on legitimate users of nasal decongestants. This is the first study to evaluate the costs of restricting access to medications on consumer welfare. Our objective was to measure the inconvenience cost consumers place on restrictions for cold medication purchases including identification requirements, purchase limits, over-the-counter availability, prescription requirements, and the active ingredient.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a contingent choice experiment with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers that presented participants with randomized, hypothetical product prices and combinations of restrictions that reflect the range of public policies. We used a conditional logit model to calculate willingness-to-accept each restriction.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Respondents' willingness-to-accept prescription requirements was $14.17 ($9.76-$18.58) and behind-the-counter restrictions was $9.68 ($7.03-$12.33) per box of pseudoephedrine product. Participants were willing to pay $4.09 ($1.66-$6.52) per box to purchase pseudoephedrine-based products over phenylephrine-based products.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Restricting access to medicines as a means of reducing the social costs of non-medical use can imply large inconvenience costs for legitimate consumers. These results are relevant to discussions of retail access restrictions on other medications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Finlay
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health Management and Policy, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA, USA.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stoecker
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cunningham
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D005260:Female; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D007885:Legislation, Pharmacy; D008297:Male; D004366:Nonprescription Drugs / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D010604:Pharmacy; D054199:Pseudoephedrine / Q000600:supply & distribution*
chemical_list: D004366:Nonprescription Drugs; D054199:Pseudoephedrine