Grantee Research Project Results
2004 Progress Report: Family Decision Making and the Value of Preventing Childhood Developmental Impairment
EPA Grant Number: R830822Title: Family Decision Making and the Value of Preventing Childhood Developmental Impairment
Investigators: Krupnick, Alan J. , Bostrom, Ann , Hoffmann, Sandra , Adamowicz, Wiktor
Institution: Resources for the Future , University of Alberta , Georgia Institute of Technology
Current Institution: Resources for the Future , Georgia Institute of Technology , University of Alberta
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: September 1, 2003 through August 31, 2007 (Extended to August 31, 2008)
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 1, 2003 through August 31, 2004
Project Amount: $344,698
RFA: Valuation of Environmental Impacts on Children's Health (2002) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health , Children's Health , Environmental Justice
Objective:
Environmental neurotoxins are believed to be a significant contributor to the developmental disabilities suffered by nearly 12 million U.S. children. Nearly 1 million American children have blood lead levels defined as lead poisoning.
Because children, especially young children, do not participate fully in the market place and do not have a mature capacity for judgment, most researchers believe that parents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for reduction in risks to their own children’s health should be part of benefits assessment for programs protecting children’s health. As measurement of the value of benefits to children from environmental policy is a new endeavor, there is a lack of knowledge about how to appropriately estimate parents’ WTP to protect their children from environmental hazards. This study will use an intra-household resource allocation modeling framework to test the appropriateness of using alternative models of family decision making to measure parental WTP to protect children from lead paint hazards.
The study is being conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in environmental economics and decision analysis. In addition to improving survey design, data and analysis from the mental models phase of this study will provide information on how to better target lead abatement programs and education. A pilot-scale survey (250 couples with children under 7) will be conducted in the Baltimore, Maryland, area and the greater Atlanta, Georgia, region.
The objectives of this research project are to:
- provide more comprehensive valuation of reduction in risk of childhood developmental impairment applicable to lead and other neurotoxins by estimating parental WTP to reduce lead-paint hazards (current regulatory benefits assessments are based on cost-of-illness and human capital approaches);
- develop more accurate methods of eliciting parental WTP for protection of children’s health by testing the impacts of using intra-household resource allocation models rather than unitary household models;
- and develop more systematic approaches to developing non-market survey instruments by using mental models to better understand the underlying decision process.
This research project has two phases. The first phase will use mental models analysis to elicit mental maps of parents’ decisions about reducing their children’s health risks from exposure to lead paint. Parents will be interviewed individually and as a couple. The interviews will focus on parents’ risk perceptions, definition of the decision problem and choice set, and individual parents’ role in joint decision-making. The second phase will use the results of the mental models analysis to develop a stated-preference, conjoint behavior survey that will allow us to estimate the value of improvements to children’s health from reduced lead paint risks.
Progress Summary:
The first phase of this study is being directed by Dr. Ann Bostrom of the Georgia Institute of Technology. This is the mental models study designed to elicit parents’ mental maps. This phase of the research project has value by itself, because so little is known about how couples make decisions about protecting their children’s health, and as a more structured approach to development of a stated-preference survey. The mental models project will provide information on how parental risk attitudes and perceptions are formed and on the structure of decision making in the family. The study will contribute to our understanding of how parents perceive lead hazards and to the decision science literature on family decision processes.
The mental models project involves two parts:
- development of an expert model of hazards associated with lead paint and in-depth interviews with 30 couples about their perception of lead hazards;
- and decision making.
During the period August 2003 through September 2004, the primary accomplishment was development of a draft expert mental model that will be sent out for expert review in the coming year. The expert model of lead hazards consists of an influence diagram that traces the hazard generation process as a series of influences on the relationship between lead in the home and health outcomes for children. We conducted an extensive review of the literature on lead paint hazards, their impact on children’s health, and alternative mitigation strategies. The purpose of the expert model is to reflect best expert judgment about the information parents need to know to make informed decisions about what actions to take to protect children from lead paint. The expert model will serve as a basis of comparison to parents’ knowledge of lead risks in the mental models interviews. We also have identified a list of experts on the impact of lead paint on children’s health and on lead paint hazard remediation, whom we will ask to review the model before it is used to compare the responses of parents in the mental models interviews. In the past year, we have developed preliminary interview protocols for the mental models couples’ interviews. These preliminary protocols were approved by the Georgia Institute of Technology and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Institutional Review Board (IRB) offices.
Future Activities:
During the coming year, we plan to finalize the expert model of lead hazards. We will contact leading experts on lead and its impact on children’s health and request that they review the influence diagram and documentation that we developed. We plan to incorporate comments we receive into a final expert model.
We also plan to finalize and administer the protocol to be used in the parent mental models interviews. The interview protocol will consist of a series of open-ended and closed questions designed to explore: parents’ knowledge about lead paint risks to children; parents’ attitudes toward lead and other environmental risks; individual parents’ time use in the home; responsibility for different types of decisions in the family; how couples make decisions regarding children’s health in the home; and how parents would make decisions if confronted with a lead paint hazard in their home. The project will draw on a sample of 30 couples in the Atlanta area who have children under the age of 7 and live in homes built before 1978. The protocol has two parts. The first will be administered to parents individually. The second will be administered to the parents as a couple. We anticipate completing the interviewing for the mental models study by the end of summer 2005. Analysis of this project’s results should be completed by December 2005. We plan on pretesting the protocols extensively before getting final IRB approval and then using the protocol in interviews with parents.
Based on the development of the expert model and on pretests of the parental interview protocols, we will develop a draft stated-preference survey instrument. Professor Robert Pollak, a leading researcher on family economics, has offered to review our stated-preference survey instrument. Professor Pollak has expressed an interest in continuing involvement in development of the stated-preference survey and will bring extensive knowledge of the literature on collective models of household decision to the project. We anticipate having a completed stated-preference survey instrument by late fall 2005 and then going into the field shortly thereafter, completing analysis by the end of spring 2006. During 2006, we will also be drafting publications based on the mental models study and the stated-preference study.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 16 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
indoor air, paint chips, exposure, risk, risk assessment, effects, health effects, human health, vulnerability, sensitive populations, dose-response, organism, infants, children, age, susceptibility, cumulative effects, toxics, heavy metals, lead, treatment remediation, decision making, conjoint analysis, observation, nonmarket valuation, contingent valuation, survey, psychological, preferences, socioeconomic, willingness-to-pay, social science, modeling, surveys, measurement methods, southeast, mid-Atlantic, Maryland, MD, Georgia, GA, EPA Region 3, EPA Region 4,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Health, PHYSICAL ASPECTS, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, Health Risk Assessment, Risk Assessments, Physical Processes, decision-making, Children's Health, Ecology and Ecosystems, Environmental Policy, Economics & Decision Making, Social Science, multi-objective decision making, policy analysis, surveys, ecological risk assessment, economic valuation, decision analysis, decision making, age-related differences, dose-response, exposure, family decision making, market valuation models, standards of value, environmental values, adult valuation of children's health, human exposure, children's vulnerablity, morbidity valuation, willingness to pay (WTP), children's environmental health, public policy, willingness to pay, multi-criteria decision analysisProgress 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.