Focus Groups Willingness to Pay

6.1    Focus Group Overview

5 focus groups were undertaken to test and develop survey components.

These comprised 2 groups made up of adults with a food hypersensitivity, three groups of parents of children with a food hypersensitivity, split by whether child had a Food Allergy, Food Intolerance or coeliac disease.

The focus groups were held online with 2 members of the research team present. The meetings were recorded. Participants received a voucher of value £15 for taking part.

After initial introductions, a link was shared for sections of the survey and the group progressed through the survey page by page and discussed the material presented and the tasks they were asked to complete.

Overall, the response was positive in terms of the

• clarity of the material presented (text and graphics) 
• the nature of the choice tasks in the DCE 
• the components of the BWS choice sets and the nature of the BWS tasks

Pill or Abstract Framing

People viewed (and completed choice sets) using 2 alternative framings:

• Pill as a delivery mechanism, 
• Abstract framing “imagine your food hypersensitivity could be removed…”. 

People did not object to the Abstract version, but participants articulated a preference (from weak to very strong) for the Pill version. This was the framing used in the main survey.

6.2    Declining a Free Good

Discussion in the focus groups revealed that short term removal of the food hypersensitivity might not be regarded as desirable – because of having to go through the process of re-adjustment after the temporary removal expires. The minimum period required to be desirable varied between people. Over the course of the focus groups the training sets (with no price) were modified to increase the duration up to a maximum of 20 years. The main survey design retained this feature and people declining free removal were skipped past the priced DCEs and asked about the minimum period of removal required to make it desirable.

6.3 Attribute Levels 

The levels of duration of food hypersensitivity removal and price were also tested and refined during the course of the focus groups.