Attributes Influencing Willingness to Pay for Overweight and Obesity Interventions in Adults: A Systematic Literature Review

This review aims to identify the associated attributes of willingness to pay (WTP) for overweight and obesity interventions. A narrative review was conducted by partially adopting the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline. A non-exhaustive search using a pre-defined strategy and keywords was done on three selected literature databases: Pubmed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The inclusion criteria for the review were original studies written in English, published between 2000 and 2022, and focused on WTP for overweight and obesity interventions in adults. The extracted studies were manually screened for their eligibility through three cascading tiers: the title, the abstract, and the full article. Only nine original studies were eligible for review based on the screening procedure of 40 screened articles. There was heterogeneity in the study designs, methods, target populations, study duration, and perspectives across the studies. The majority of the studies showed that higher WTP was associated with younger age, having higher income, being female, having higher body mass index (BMI), having the perception of being overweight, habits, and attitudes. WTP is also attributed to the associated percentage of weight loss, long-term health risk reduction, time to noticeable weight loss, delivery mode, side effects, lifestyle modification, and costs of interventions. The identification of common attributes of the WTP for overweight and obesity intervention can assist in the formulation and implementation of effective evidence-based policies. Specific sub-groups with low WTP could be targeted via unique initiatives to improve their participation in weight-loss interventions.