The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for effective infectious disease outbreak prevention. This could entail installing an integrated, international early warning system, aiming to contain and mitigate infectious diseases outbreaks. The amount of resources governments should spend on such preventive measures can be informed by the value citizens attach to such a system. This was already recognized in 2018, when a contingent valuation willingness to pay (WTP) experiment was fielded, eliciting the WTP for such a system in six European countries. We replicated that experiment in the spring of 2020 to test whether and how WTP had changed during an actual pandemic (COVID-19), taking into account differences in infection rates and stringency of measures by government between countries. Overall, we found significant increases in WTP between the two time points, with mean WTP for an early warning system increasing by about 50% (median 30%), from around €20 to €30 per month. However, there were marked differences between countries and subpopulations, and changes were only partially explained by COVID-19 burden. We discuss possible explanations for and implication of our findings.

COVID-19 大流行凸显了有效预防传染病爆发的必要性。这可能需要安装一个综合的国际预警系统，旨在遏制和减轻传染病的爆发。政府应在此类预防措施上花费的资源数量可以通过公民对此类系统的重视程度来确定。这在 2018 年已经得到认可，当时开展了或有估值支付意愿 (WTP) 实验，在六个欧洲国家引发了此类系统的 WTP。我们在 2020 年春季重复了该实验，以测试在实际大流行 (COVID-19) 期间 WTP 是否以及如何发生变化，同时考虑到各国之间感染率的差异和政府措施的严格程度。全面的，我们发现两个时间点之间的 WTP 显着增加，早期预警系统的平均 WTP 增加了约 50%（中位数为 30%），从每月约 20 欧元到 30 欧元。然而，国家和亚人群之间存在显着差异，而变化仅部分由 COVID-19 负担解释。我们讨论了我们发现的可能解释和影响。