OBJECTIVES

: Given rising obesity rates, decision makers need inputs that can help in the prioritisation of funding for obesity interventions. Many economic evaluations of obesity interventions are considered cost-effective, however, even with policies targeting obesity, obesity rates continue to rise. This highlights the issue policy makers have in influencing people to adopt healthier lifestyles. The aim of this study is to use a DCE to elicit preferences of weight loss interventions for obese individuals.

METHODS

: A DCE was conducted on a representative sample of the Australian population. A total of 1648 respondents completed the final DCE, recruited through an online panel. Respondents were given choice sets of various lifestyle interventions with varying cost, duration, time, diet and exercise components. Obesity related diseases, appearance and quality-of-life were also included as attributes. The final analysis was conducted using mixed-logit and latent class modelling. Interactions terms were included to explore preference heterogeneity and the willingness-to-pay to change current lifestyle behaviours was estimated.

RESULTS

: The results demonstrated a preference for changes in physical activity over changes to diet, with obese individuals requiring compensation to adopt healthier eating habits. Participants preferred weight loss over disease risk reduction or changes in appearance. Obese individuals had similar preferences across attributes compared to normal or overweight individuals, apart from preferring interventions with greater weight loss or individual exercises. The strongest preference for all weight groups was improvements in quality-of-life.

CONCLUSIONS

: These findings provide insights into why some people fail and others succeed when adopting a lifestyle intervention, which can aid in policy development for the design of weight loss interventions. Stated preference techniques, such as DCEs may be an alternate resource to aid in eliciting obese individual’s preferences for lifestyle interventions and aid policy makers in the in uptake and adherence to interventions.