Owen O'Donnel (Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam) on "Leveraging probability distortion to target prevention? A lottery experiment on cardiovascular risk"

Targeting is critical to cost-effective disease prevention. We use a randomized experiment in the Philippines to test whether a lottery incentive for a medical check-up succeeds in targeting those who would otherwise underinvest in prevention of cardiovascular disease because they distort probabilities. In theory, a lottery is more appealing to those who display inverse S-shaped probability distortion – a bias that discourages prevention of intermediate risks. We find that probability distortion is associated with underprevention at baseline. However, contrary to theory, the lottery is not particularly effective in targeting those inclined to distort probabilities.