Hypothetical demand curve and price for the COVID-19 vaccine
Hypothetical demand curve and price for the COVID-19 vaccine

Summary/Abstract: This research aims to study the demand for a COVID-19 vaccine. The main objective of this research was to investigate the willingness to pay (WTP) of those people who are eligible for the government-financed vaccination programme under which this medication is available free of charge. Based on this, the study aimed to assess the optimum price that people are willing to pay for the vaccine. More than 300 undergraduate students were questioned in classroom experiments about their personal preferences in order to derive the demand curve for a hypothetical market for the COVID-19 vaccine. A regression analysis of the results showed that the linear and power functions could describe consumer behaviour and predict an optimal market price for the investigated item. In addition, the linear model fitted better. Finally, we compared our result with the real prices of the various vaccines available on the market to see if the predicted price was viable under the prevailing market conditions. The optimal price informs us how many people will receive the next vaccine if it is offered at a specific market price. It also informs us what price the government should assign to the vaccine to secure a particular target vaccination rate.

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