title: An elicitation of utility for quality of life under prospect theory.
abstract: This paper performs several tests of decision analysis applied to the health domain. First, we conduct a test of the normative expected utility theory. Second, we investigate the possibility to elicit the more general prospect theory. We observe risk aversion for gains and losses and violations of expected utility. These results imply that mechanisms governing decisions in the health domain are similar to those in the monetary domain. However, we also report one important deviation: utility is universally concave for the health outcomes used in this study, in contrast to the commonly found S-shaped utility for monetary outcomes, with concave utility for gains and convex utility for losses.
authors.affiliation: iBMG, Erasmus University, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: attema@bmg.eur.nl.
authors.forename: Arthur E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Attema
authors.affiliation: iBMG, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Werner B F
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Brouwer
authors.affiliation: CREM, University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: l'Haridon
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain; Yunus Centre for Social Business & Health, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK.
authors.forename: Jose Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Pinto
mesh_terms: D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D006801:Humans; D011788:Quality of Life
keywords: Certainty equivalences; Loss aversion; Prospect theory; QALYs; Utility function