Does targeted information impact consumers’ preferences for value-based health insurance? Evidence from a survey experiment

Table 3 Background characteristics overall and by treatment group and balance tests

	Pooled	Control group	Treatment group1	Treatment group 2	Balance tests
Female	50.04	49.32	50.30	50.51	0.740
Age†	49.61 (13.74)	49.69 (13.87)	49.57 (13.75)	49.58 (13.59)	0.232
Non-Swiss	8.83	8.79	7.94	9.76	0.129
Tertiary education	36.29	35.95	37.61	35.32	0.295
Monthly income in CHF^a					0.932
< 4500	18.52	18.53	18.52	18.51
4500–5999	19.27	19.88	19.40	18.52
6000–8999	30.67	30.82	31.08	30.10
≥ 9000	31.55	30.73	31.00	32.87
Number of doctor visits†	3.62 (6.98)	3.66 (9.81)	3.70 (7.05)	3.52 (7.08)	0.455
Chronic health condition^b	37.88	38.65	38.70	39.67	0.373
Type of health plan^c					0.863
Basic	19.30	19.48	19.68	18.73
HMO	8.95	8.89	8.42	9.54
Telemedicine	16.65	16.82	17.07	16.07
Family doctor	55.10	54.80	54.84	55.65
Yearly deductible in CHF^d					0.832
300	38.35	39.13	38.73	40.20
500	10.16	10.26	10.65	9.57
1 000	3.73	3.50	3.90	3.81
1 500	6.60	7.05	5.86	6.89
2 000	3.66	3.42	3.99	3.58
2 500	36.49	36.65	36.87	35.96
Out-of-pocket health expenditures in CHF^e					0.740
None	10.10	10.39	10.75	10.86
1–299	25.57	27.71	27.64	25.70
300–499	19.62	20.45	19.68	22.07
500–999	20.12	20.83	20.98	21.96
1000–1499	9.96	10.84	10.79	9.95
≥ 1500	9.27	9.78	10.17	9.44
Linguistic region					0.336
German	70.82	70.24	70.52	71.69
French	23.33	24.22	23.87	21.89
Italian	5.86	5.54	5.61	6.42
Health insurance literacy†	2.86 (0.52)	2.86 (0.51)	2.85 (0.53)	2.86 (0.53)	0.104
Financial risk-taking†	2.39 (1.2)	2.38 (18)	2.42 (1.22)	2.39 (1.21)	0.603
Time preferences†	3.40 (1.16)	3.41 (1.17)	3.42 (1.17)	3.38 (1.15)	0.852
Number of individuals	6033	2024	2000	2009

Source: 2021 Swiss Health Insurance Literacy Survey. Notes: Reported numbers are weighted sample proportions, or sample means and standard deviations (in brackets) for variables marked with †, in total and per treatment arm (control, treatment groups 1 and 2). Weights were used to reflect oversampling for selected population groups. Income was missing for 17.47% of the sample (1053 individuals). Number of doctor visits in the last 12 months; results do not display 26 individuals who did not answer. Type of health plans: “basic” refers to free choice of providers; managed care plans composed of HMO, telemedicine, or family doctor; category “other” with 1.77% of the sample who did not want to report it. Number of responses in category “don’t know”, “no answer”, or “other” not shown for the variables (a) 17.47%/17.38%/17.74%/17.29%, (b) 2.07%/2.05%/1.94%/2.08%, (c) 4.36%/4.08%/4.95%/4.60%, (d) 1.94%/1.90%/2.14%/1.78%, and (e) 5.36%/5.43%/5.56%/5.09% (per column). Health insurance literacy on a scale from 1 = very bad to 4 = very good. Willingness to take financial risks and willingness to sacrifice something today to benefit in the future (time preferences) on a scale from 1 = completely unwilling to 5 = completely willing. The last column shows p-values for chi-squared tests of the null hypothesis of equal distributions of the characteristics between the treatment and control groups

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