Willingness to pay for dental fear treatment. Is supplying dental fear treatment socially beneficial?

The aim of this paper is to discuss the social desirability of supplying dental fear treatment in addition to dental treatment using the results from a treatment programme for patients with severe dental fear. The programme consisted of three different dental fear treatments: Cognitive therapy, applied relaxation and nitrous oxide sedation, in addition to dental treatment. To evaluate the effects of uncertainty on the patients' benefits from the programme, we elicited their willingness to pay, both before and after receiving treatment, since we expected patients to be uncertain about the outcome of the dental fear treatment. We found that the social desirability of the treatment was very sensitive to uncertainty. While only 24% of the patients were willing to pay the actual cost of the treatment before attending, 71% were willing to pay afterwards. This implies that many patients who would benefit from the treatment ex post are not willing to pay the cost of the treatment ex ante, and will thus not receive any treatment unless it is subsidized.