Rationing of a scarce life‐saving resource: Public preferences for prioritizing COVID‐19 vaccination
通过离散选择实验和最佳-最差排序，调查2060名比利时人对COVID-19疫苗优先接种顺序的看法，发现直接询问与间接选择揭示的偏好不同，公众支持优先接种关键工作者，但对老年人和高风险人群的优先级存在分歧。
In the face of limited COVID-19 vaccine supply, governments have had to identify priority groups for vaccination. In October 2020, when it was still uncertain whether COVID-19 vaccines would be shown to work in trials, we conducted a discrete choice experiment and a best-worst ranking exercise on a representative sample of 2060 Belgians in order to elicit their views on how to set fair vaccination priorities. When asked directly, our respondents prioritized the groups that would later receive priority: essential workers, the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions. When priorities were elicited indirectly, through observing choices between individuals competing for a vaccine, different preferences emerged. The elderly were given lower priority and respondents divided within two clusters. While both clusters wanted to vaccinate the essential workers in the second place, one cluster (N = 1058) primarily wanted to target virus spreaders in order to control transmission whereas the other cluster (N = 886) wanted to prioritize those who were most at risk because of a pre-existing health condition. Other strategies to allocate a scarce resource such as using a "lottery", "first-come, first-served" approach or highest willingness-to-pay received little support.