Testing is a crucial strategy to control the spread of a pandemic. Voluntary participation in this strategy will depend on individual preferences towards and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for test results. We distributed a web-based, contingent valuation survey to social-media users in 16 Latin American countries to evaluate regional attitudes towards the emerging COVID-19 outbreak and WTP for COVID-19 testing. We observe that the cost of the test and household income are important determinants of testing intentions. We find higher WTP among those reporting greater concern relative to the average respondent. Accounting for uncertainty, our results indicate a WTP of approximately $45 dollars or 4.2 % of monthly income among respondents. These results, paired with our predicted participation rate of between 84–94 % for a $1 test, suggest that local officials will be able to effectively recruit participation in this mitigation strategy given the appropriate subsidization structure.

测试是控制大流行蔓延的关键策略。自愿参与该策略将取决于个人对测试结果的偏爱和支付意愿（WTP）。我们向16个拉丁美洲国家/地区的社交媒体用户分发了基于网络的或有条件的估值调查，以评估地区对新兴COVID-19爆发和WTP进行COVID-19测试的态度。我们观察到测试成本和家庭收入是测试意图的重要决定因素。我们发现，在那些相对于平均受访者而言担忧更大的国家中，WTP更高。考虑到不确定性，我们的结果表明，受访者的WTP约为45美元，占月收入的4.2％。这些结果，加上我们对$ 1考试的预期参与率在84–94％之间，