Contingent Valuation of Mortality Risk Reduction in Developing Countries: A Mission Impossible?

We examine the effect of training the respondents regarding probabilities and risk reductions, in addition to using visual aids to communicate risk and risk reductions, in a contingent valuation survey of mortality risk reduction in Bangladesh. We elicit individuals’ risk perception and find that people on average overestimate the mortality risk at younger ages and underestimate it at older ages. Our results indicate a significantly higher WTP for the trained sub-sample, and WTP is sensitive to the magnitude of risk reduction both with and without the training.