Valuing the invaluable: Do emotional experiences during fertility treatments affect the willingness to pay for them?

Introduction: This paper extends the accepted economic method of valuation by taking psychological factors into consideration. Objective: The unique psychological factors of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have been explored and examined in order to discover whether psychological variables are correlated to background factors: sociodemographic, satisfaction from IVF medical treatment and health related factors, and whether psychological variables have an influence on the willingness to pay (WTP) for IVF treatment. Another purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of satisfaction from IVF treatment on the relationship between the psychological variables and the willingness to pay (WTP) for IVF treatment. Method: The study was carried out on 204 patients from 8 public IVF units, and provided data on their emotional response and their maximum WTP for IVF treatment. Results: Background factors were found to have a significant impact on IVF patients’ emotional outcomes. Evidence was found for gender-based variances in psychological reactions related to infertility; however, WTP remained robust and was not influenced by psychological variables. The results show that satisfaction from treatment can be regarded as a moderating variable between the psychological variables and the willingness to pay (WTP) for IVF treatment. Conclusion: The research findings indicate that fertility problems affect the quality of life of women more adversely than of men, and women suffer more negative emotions as a result of infertility. A unique emotional response that seems to be an important outcome in the experience of infertility and that was demonstrated in our study is shame. The sociocultural environment affects emotional responses regarding WTP, while IVF patients’ satisfaction with medical treatment may moderate the emotional effect of psychological factors on the WTP for IVF treatment.