The influence of price and funding source disclosure on medication labels: Implications for intended adherence, perceived value and efficacy, and feelings of burden and guilt

Objectives: To examine if informing people in free-at-the-point-of-use medical systems of the financial value of medicines, and priming them with the fact that the medication is funded by taxation, influences people’s perceived value and efficacy of the medicines, feelings of burdensomeness and guilt, and intended adherence. Design: An experiment was implemented to examine the impact of medication labelling featuring the presence (vs. absence) of the phrase ‘funded by UK the taxpayer’ and pricing information (absent vs. £20 vs. £200) on outcome measures. Methods: A total of 257 UK participants (age: M = 29.10 years, SD = 9.15; 89 males, 167 females, one undisclosed) who were currently taking medication were recruited from an online participant pool (prolific academic). Participants viewed an image of a medication with the manipulated price and taxation message on the label. They then completed a number of measures to gauge perceived value and efficacy of the medicines, feelings of burdensomeness and guilt, and intended adherence. Results: Findings point to both positive and negative consequences of such labelling of medication, with the taxpayer label increasing perceptions of value but also increasing feelings of guilt. The price labels demonstrated a positive effect on perceived value and intended adherence. Conclusions: Discussion of results is centred on potential policy implications, applied recommendations, and future directions for study.