Willingness to pay for improved working conditions of nurses: Results from a factorial survey experiment in Germany

Many countries face substantial shortages of skilled nurses. With an aging population and global demographic changes, developing a skilled workforce of nurses has become one of the central challenges for public health care. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated labor shortages, which pose a threat to the quality of publicly provided health care. Improving nurses' working conditions could be a means by which to address the global shortages of nurses. However, in countries with public health care, such improvements may come with additional costs in the form of higher taxes or social security contributions. Therefore, such improvements partly depend on people's willingness to pay (WTP) for them.