The aim of the study was to see how important patient characteristics were for someone when making a decision on who gets the ventilator. In other words, it looks at how social preferences affected allocation decisions. The study selected 10 characteristics:

• Age
• Gender
• Socioeconomic status
• Criminal records,
• Probability of survival after treatment
• Number of people the patient has infected
• Family members who have been infected
• Expected number of days that this patient needs to be put on a ventilator
• Costs paid by public finance
• Nationality