OBJECTIVES: DCE was applied to investigate nurses’ preferred hospital choice criteria and to investigate the trends in the trade-offs by calculating the marginal rate of substitution between these criteria. This study identified the properties of the hospitals primarily selected by nurses, and aims to estimate the monetary value of each attribute.

METHODS: Based on discussions and in-depth interviews with nurses’ focus groups and a literature review, we created a discrete choice experiment (DCE) that assessed how nurses’ stated preference for a certain hospital choice was influenced by various job attributes: location of hospital, hospital type, salary per year, period required for upgrade of position, organization culture, leadership type of head nurse, level of nurse staffing, etc. We applied this DCE to nurses in South Korea using a brief structured questionnaire, and we used conditional logit models to estimate the utility of each job’s attributes. Willingness to pay (WTP) was estimated as the ratio of the value of the coefficient of interest to the negative of the cost attribute.

RESULTS: Complete data for the DCE analysis were available for 280 nurses. In the main effect mixed logit model, location of hospital (large city), organization culture (hierarchical) were negatively associated with job preference. Among factors to be positive association, period required for upgrade of position (less 10 years), level of nurse staffing (high) have bigger influence on hospital choice. The WTP threshold was 14,536,200 KRW for period required for upgrade of position (less 10 years) and 17,858,080 KRW for the level of nurse staffing (high).

CONCLUSIONS: If we provide a variety of opportunities for upgrade of position and make an effort to higher level of nurse staffing, we can attract nurses to hospitals in rural areas.