Grantee Research Project Results
2003 Progress Report: Environmental Risks to Children's Health: Parents' Risk Beliefs, Protective Behavior, and Willingness to Pay
EPA Grant Number: R828717Title: Environmental Risks to Children's Health: Parents' Risk Beliefs, Protective Behavior, and Willingness to Pay
Investigators: Dickie, Mark , Gerking, Shelby
Institution: University of Southern Mississippi , University of Wyoming
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2003
Project Period Covered by this Report: January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2004
Project Amount: $347,373
RFA: Valuation of Children's Health Effects (2000) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health , Children's Health , Environmental Justice
Objective:
The objective of this research project is to examine the formation of risk beliefs and willingness to pay to avoid skin cancer by analyzing decisions parents make concerning their own health, the health of their children, and the health of others outside their immediate family. The following five questions are being addressed:
(1) What determines parents' (ex ante) subjective beliefs about their own and their children's risk of contracting skin cancer?
(2) What protective actions do parents take to reduce the risk of skin cancer to themselves and to their children?
(3) How much are parents willing to pay (ex ante) to reduce their own and their children's risk of contracting skin cancer?
(4) Are parents willing to pay an additional sum to protect the world's population from skin cancer?
(5) How do income, family structure and composition, parental education, and other characteristics affect willingness to pay, risk beliefs, and risk-related behaviors?
Progress Summary:
The project has generated new empirical estimates aimed at valuing environmental risks affecting parents and children. Although protecting children’s health is an important goal of environmental policy, relatively little is known about the economic benefits of reducing environmental health risks to children. The specific environmental risk considered in this study is skin cancer, the most common form of cancer in the United States. Links between environmental exposure to ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer are well established, and chances of getting skin cancer from a given amount of exposure to solar radiation partially depend on observable genetic characteristics such as skin type and complexion.
Preliminary results indicate that parents believe their own lifetime risk of getting skin cancer, and of dying from the disease if it is contracted, is greater than their children's risk. Parents value reductions in their children's risks more than twice as highly as reductions in their own risks. Also, parents view reductions in mortality risk as about 20 times more valuable than reductions in morbidity risk, both for themselves and their children. There appear to be significant differences in risk perceptions and valuations between persons with different demographic characteristics.
A key advantage of this project is that morbidity and mortality risks are treated together in a consistent theoretical framework. Prior studies of health risks treat either morbidity or mortality, but not both, yet these two health outcomes obviously are related (i.e., death is a possible outcome of illness). Also, risk is treated as endogenous and is measured as the risk perceived by survey respondents. An important methodological advantage of the study is that data are collected using an experimental design that randomizes health risk changes presented to parents. This feature sidesteps a number of statistical problems because risk changes are exogenous treatments that are unrelated to individual characteristics.
A theoretical model is developed to support the empirical estimation of economic benefits of reducing risks faced by both parents and children. The model shows how to compute parents' marginal rates of substitution between their own and their children's risks. This calculation reveals how parents value their children's health relative to their own and may be useful for benefits transfer in situations where willingness to pay for reduced risk to adults has been established but corresponding values for children are not available. The model also shows how to compute parents' marginal rates of substitution between the risk of getting skin cancer and the risk of dying from the disease. This calculation reveals the relative value to parents of reducing morbidity and mortality risk, and may provide useful information in examining priorities for environmental risk reduction.
The model is estimated using data collected by an interactive computerized questionnaire administered in Hattiesburg, MS, during the summer of 2002. The survey was developed based on results of a pilot survey of 160 parents in the same community. The pilot survey also focused on skin cancer risk valuation for parents and children, but was not funded by this grant. Hattiesburg is located in the southern part of Mississippi, has a mean annual high temperature reading of 77.5°F, a subtropical climate, and a large number of sunshine days each year. Thus, residents have experienced the consequences of exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight. The sample was drawn by random digit dialing.
Key aspects of the experimental design used in the survey were to: (1) determine parents' perceptions of skin cancer risk to themselves and their children; and (2) obtain willingness to pay for skin cancer risk reductions. Parents' subjective assessments of their own and their children's risks of contracting skin cancer, and of dying from the disease, were assessed using interactive risk scales that closely resemble the grid squares used by previous researchers. Risk reductions were presented to parents using randomly assigned labels of a hypothetical sun lotion that offered different amounts of protection to adults and children. Although marginal rates of substitution are obtained from parents' stated preferences for hypothetical sunscreen lotions, the desired estimates are ratios of bids. Thus, the problem identified in earlier research that stated preference bids overestimate what people actually would pay may be at least partially ameliorated.
Results reveal considerable variation in perceptions about lifetime skin cancer risk, with some parents believing that skin cancer is highly unlikely and a smaller number of other parents believing that skin cancer virtually is inevitable. On average, parents believe they are more likely to get skin cancer than their children, and parents appear to have overestimated the risk of contracting skin cancer, relative to epidemiological evidence. Regarding the possibility of death from skin cancer, most parents appear to be aware that skin cancer is seldom fatal. Again, the average parent believes their own risk of dying from skin cancer is larger than their child's risk.
Preliminary estimates indicate that parents' marginal rates of substitution between their children's unconditional lifetime risk of dying from skin cancer and the corresponding risk for themselves are about 2.33, although there are significant differences depending on the age and gender of the child. Estimates of parents' marginal rates of substitution between morbidity and mortality risk indicate that reducing mortality risk is 20 times more valuable than reducing morbidity risk, for both parents and children. These results suggest that the children's health component of benefits for environmental risk reduction may be quite large, while the morbidity (as opposed to mortality) component may be quite small.
Future Activities:
We will prepare final versions of manuscripts cited above for submission to peer-reviewed journals, and prepare a draft of the book. The original proposal for this award envisioned a followup survey that would validate results obtained in the Hattiesburg survey. Laramie, WY, was the site proposed for the second survey. In light of response rates achieved in the Hattiesburg survey, however, Laramie is now considered too small a city to collect the needed number of observations. Consequently, Knowledge Networks will conduct the second survey using a national panel of respondents. The design of this survey and the scope of research will hold as closely as possible to the aims of the original proposal. The survey has been approved by the Institutional Review Board, and it will be fielded as soon as possible once administrative and budgetary issues are resolved.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 8 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
nonmarket valuation, preferences, children, risk, human health, stratospheric ozone, survey, contingent valuation, public policy, cost benefit, economics, social science, socioeconomic, age, race, sex, CFCs, EPA Region 4, willingness to pay, risk beliefs, risk-related behavior, skin cancer, ultraviolet radiation, solar radiation, morbidity and mortality risks., RFA, Health, Scientific Discipline, Air, Geographic Area, air toxics, State, Economics, Susceptibility/Sensitive Population/Genetic Susceptibility, Children's Health, Ecology and Ecosystems, Ecological Risk Assessment, genetic susceptability, Social Science, level of education, benefits transfer, risk assessment, sensitive populations, WY, stratospheric ozone, behavioral assessment, environmental risks, measuring childhood exposure, children's health values, Mississippi (MS), family values, environmental values, survey, children, adult valuation of children's health, modeling parental behavior, willingness to pay (WTP), morbidity valuation, environmental health hazard, Wyoming, skin cancer, environmental effects, willingness to pay, toxicsProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.