Analysis of Trends in Willingness to Pay Research in Healthcare Service of Korea

Purpose: This study was to review the previous studies on the ‘ Willingness to Pay (WTP)' for healthcare services and suggest future implications for nursing research. Methods: Using the scoping review method, we used RISS, KISS, KMbase, Koreamed, PubMed, EMbase, CINAHL as searching engines. According to the selection and exclusion criteria, 40 appropriate studies were selected and analyzed. Results: 24 studies were categorized into medical service field among medical, public health, and nursing service fields. A total of 16 studies were related to healthcare system (policies), 13 studies were to the healthcare intervention, and 11 studies were categorized into the health management. Most of the methods for eliciting WTP (70%) were about a contingent valuation method (CVM), and the use of double bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) tended to increase. In the nursing field, five WTP studies were identified: two studies published in the early years of 2000, which were conducted on hospital-based home health visit services. Recent studies were mostly about counseling and education by advanced practice nurses (APNs). Conclusion: WTP studies on healthcare services were largely published from the medical fields and health policy areas with the CVM method. In the field of nursing, studies have been conducted on the subject of limited service areas. More active exploration of research topics is required, particularly under the current policy setting, where discussion of the public health insurance fee for nursing practice is essential.