TITLE:
A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Lifestyle Factors Affecting Laypeople’s Allocation of a Scarce Medical Resource
AUTHORS:
Agathe Nguyen Huynh, Adrian Furnham, Alastair McClelland
KEYWORDS:
Allocation, Kidney Dialysis, Smoking, Alcohol, Weight, Addiction
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.12 No.2,
February
17,
2020
ABSTRACT: This study investigates how lifestyle factors affect laypeople’s allocation of a scarce medical resource and explores cross-cultural differences in ethical decision-making between the UK, France and Switzerland. A total of 193 participants completed an online questionnaire in which they had to rate the profiles of 16 hypothetical patients in terms of priority for access to kidney dialysis. Each profile was a unique combination of the following lifestyle factors: smoking behaviour, alcohol consumption, weight and amount of physical activity. As predicted, it was found that non-smokers were favoured over smokers, moderate drinkers over heavy drinkers, normal weight patients over obese patients and frequent exercisers over infrequent exercisers. However, contrary to our predictions, no cross-cultural differences were evident. The potential impact of these findings with respect to the formulation of guidelines for allocating scarce medical resources is discussed.