Parental acceptance and willingness to pay for a newly designed kitchen rack to reduce paediatric burns

Abstract

The majority of pediatric burns in Mongolia occur within the home, particularly in the spaces dedicated to cooking. This makes home environment modification a priority for injury prevention. Many of these injuries are caused by electric appliances used in traditional tent-like dwellings (called a ger). In the present study, we designed and provided a context appropriate kitchen rack to 50 households with children aged 0–3 years living in gers and investigated parental views on the acceptability of the rack and willingness-to-pay (WTP) through face-to-face structured individual and group interviews and the contingent valuation method. We used the DCchoice package of R to estimate the median WTP and its 95% confidence interval by the household income, previous experience of childhood burn injury, and the number of children in the household. There was a total of 89 children aged <5 years in the 50 households, with a total of 59 burn experiences since birth including 29 treated at inpatient facilities. The median WTP was MNT 106,000 (about USD 37). The WTP appeared to be higher for the households with a higher income, more severe child burn experiences, and a greater number of children in the household. In the group interviews conducted after 4–6 weeks of routine use, the participants indicated that the use of the rack had resulted in a less stressful cooking environment, and the kitchen rack was described as a positive contribution to the reduction of risk to their young children. Whilst there were some suggestions for minor modifications, the rack was well accepted as a means of child burn prevention by the parents of infants and toddlers in Mongolia.