The effect of promotional health message framing on the perceived benefit of mammography: evidence from estimation of willingness to pay

TL;DR

This study shows that how health messages are framed affects how much people are willing to pay for mammography, with loss-framed messages being more effective.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel method to estimate willingness to pay for mammography based on message framing.

Findings

Loss-framed messages increased mammography demand by 38.7% compared to 25.1% for gain-framed messages.

Willingness to pay was higher in the loss frame (10.68 US$) than in the gain frame (4.74 US$).

Price and income elasticity of mammography demand were estimated as −0.19 and 0.24, respectively.

Abstract

Evidence from behavioral economics has shown that framing health information can impact the demand for screening. We examined the effect of promotional message framing on mammography demand by estimating willingness to pay (WTP).

This experimental study was conducted in 2024 over a period of 3 months. The interesting outcome was a WTP for mammography. 354 women were randomly selected and randomly assigned between the two study arms. The intervention involved the presentation of health information in two frames of gain and loss. The mammography demand has been estimated using robust standard error Logistic regression. Demand rate of mammography has been compared between two types of information framing using the chi-square test. Finally, the monetary value of willingness to pay (WTP) for mammography was estimated using the methodology developed by López-Feldman. All analyses were done using STATA 17.

The price and income elasticity of mammography demand were estimated as − 0.19 and 0.24, respectively (P < 0.01). The higher demand rate in the loss frame compared to the gain frame (38.7% vs. 25.1%) was statistically significant, and its effect size was estimated to be 0.282 (p < 0.01). The value of WTP in the loss frame (10.68 US$) was estimated to be more significant than in the gain frame (4.74 US$) (p < 0.01).

This study suggests that health educators consider the message’s persuasiveness with the type of health action before designing health messages. Moreover, health practitioners should use health messages with a loss frame to increase the demand for screening services such as mammography.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41043-025-00970-8.

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