IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v15y2018i10p2297-d176817.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Haze Attitudes and the Willingness to Pay for Haze Improvement: Evidence from Four Cities in Shandong Province, China

Author

Listed:
  • Fan Yang

    (Center for Health Economics Experiment and Public Policy, School of Public Health, Shandong University, No. 44 Wenhuaxi Road, Lixia, District, Jinan 250012, China)

  • Ling Ding

    (Tianjin Hongqiao District Health and Family Planning Commission, 202 Qinjian Road, Hongqiao 300131, China)

  • Cai Liu

    (School of Management, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin 300193, China)

  • Lizheng Xu

    (Center for Health Economics Experiment and Public Policy, School of Public Health, Shandong University, No. 44 Wenhuaxi Road, Lixia, District, Jinan 250012, China)

  • Stephen Nicholas

    (School of Economics and School of Management, Tianjin Normal University, West Bin Shui Avenue, Tianjin 300074, China
    TOP Education Institute, 1 Central Avenue Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh Sydney, NSW 2015, Australia
    Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, University Drive, Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia)

  • Jian Wang

    (Center for Health Economics Experiment and Public Policy, School of Public Health, Shandong University, No. 44 Wenhuaxi Road, Lixia, District, Jinan 250012, China)

Abstract

Background: Given the health and welfare impacts of haze, haze reduction governance challenges Chinese policy-makers. Surprisingly, there have been no studies of the differences in the public’s willingness to pay (WTP) for haze governance within a province. Yet haze reduction policies are implemented at the provincial level. Based on the contingent valuation method, data on WTP for haze governance across four industrial cities in Shandong province were collected using a questionnaire survey. Method: A combination of stratified sampling and non-probability sampling methods were used, yielding a valid sample of 1006 respondents. The Heckman sample selection model was used to analyze factors determining WTP and WTP amount. Results: 53% of respondents were unwilling to pay for haze reduction, while less than 1% of these respondents were satisfied with Shandong’s air quality. About half (47%) of the respondents were willing to pay, on average, US$14.14 per household per year for haze governance. We found that there were significant inter-city differences in the WTP and WTP amounts: those with a higher income, education, haze knowledge, and haze concern were WTP; age, marital status, and subjective indicators displayed a negative relationship with WTP amount. About two thirds of the non-payers, and those with poor environmental knowledge, argued that air quality improvement was mainly the responsibility of governments (39.3%) and polluters (25.6%), instead of ordinary citizens. Further, 27% of non-payers said that their income was too low to contribute to a pollution tax and 6.3% claimed that they did not believe the funds would be used effectively for environmental conservation. Conclusions: City-specific differences in WTP may caution against “one size fits all” policies. The study indicates that the government may need to target policies to specific cities and the characteristics of residents in those cities by age, education, and income groups and residents’ subjective evaluation of the government and the haze problem and those responsible for pollution.

Suggested Citation

  • Fan Yang & Ling Ding & Cai Liu & Lizheng Xu & Stephen Nicholas & Jian Wang, 2018. "Haze Attitudes and the Willingness to Pay for Haze Improvement: Evidence from Four Cities in Shandong Province, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-15, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:10:p:2297-:d:176817
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/10/2297/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/10/2297/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lee, Sanghoon & Oh, Dae-Won, 2015. "Economic growth and the environment in China: Empirical evidence using prefecture level data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 73-85.
    2. Birdir, Sevda & Ünal, Özlem & Birdir, Kemal & Williams, Allan T., 2013. "Willingness to pay as an economic instrument for coastal tourism management: Cases from Mersin, Turkey," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 279-283.
    3. Guizhi Wang & Yingxi Song & Jibo Chen & Jun Yu, 2016. "Valuation of Haze Management and Prevention Using the Contingent Valuation Method with the Sure Independence Screening Algorithm," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-11, March.
    4. Dale Whittington, 2002. "Improving the Performance of Contingent Valuation Studies in Developing Countries," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(1), pages 323-367, June.
    5. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    6. Sattout, E.J. & Talhouk, S.N. & Caligari, P.D.S., 2007. "Economic value of cedar relics in Lebanon: An application of contingent valuation method for conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 315-322, March.
    7. J. Lon Carlson, 2000. "Hypothetical surveys versus real commitments: further evidence," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(7), pages 447-450.
    8. Sun, Chuanwang & Yuan, Xiang & Yao, Xin, 2016. "Social acceptance towards the air pollution in China: Evidence from public's willingness to pay for smog mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 313-324.
    9. Johanna L. Bosch & James K. Hammitt & Milton C. Weinstein & Maria G.M. Hunink, 1998. "Estimating General-population Utilities Using One Binary-gamble Question per Respondent," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 18(4), pages 381-390, October.
    10. John T. Cuddington & F. Reed Johnson & Jack L. Knetsch, 1981. "Valuing Amenity Resources in the Presence of Substitutes," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 526-535.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jibo Chen & Keyao Chen & Guizhi Wang & Rongrong Chen & Xiaodong Liu & Guo Wei, 2019. "Indirect Economic Impact Incurred by Haze Pollution: An Econometric and Input–Output Joint Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-14, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cheng-Te Lin & Yu-Sheng Huang & Lu-Wen Liao & Chung-Te Ting, 2020. "Measuring Consumer Willingness to Pay to Reduce Health Risks of Contracting Dengue Fever," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-15, March.
    2. Richard T. Carson, 2011. "Contingent Valuation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2489.
    3. Sun, Chuanwang & Yuan, Xiang & Yao, Xin, 2016. "Social acceptance towards the air pollution in China: Evidence from public's willingness to pay for smog mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 313-324.
    4. Gelo, Dambala & Koch, Steven F., 2015. "Contingent valuation of community forestry programs in Ethiopia: Controlling for preference anomalies in double-bounded CVM," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 79-89.
    5. Ahlheim, Michael & Frör, Oliver & Nguyen Minh Duc & Rehl, Antonia & Siepmann, Ute & Pham Van Dinh, 2017. "Labour as a utility measure reconsidered," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 03-2017, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    6. Jaqueline Garcia-Yi, 2014. "Identification of Dried Native Chili Markets in the International Tourism Sector in Peru: An Open-Ended Contingent Valuation Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-14, February.
    7. Zheng, Xuemei & Li, Cao & Fang, Xingming & Zhang, Ning, 2021. "Price sensitivity and consumers’ support for renewable energy in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    8. Dimitrios Kalfas & Fotios Chatzitheodoridis & Efstratios Loizou & Katerina Melfou, 2022. "Willingness to Pay for Urban and Suburban Green," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-21, February.
    9. Sonja S. Teelucksingh & Paulo A.L.D. Nunes, 2010. "Biodiversity Valuation in Developing Countries: A Focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS)," Working Papers 2010.111, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    10. Fanbin Kong & Kai Xiong & Ning Zhang, 2014. "Determinants of Farmers’ Willingness to Pay and Its Level for Ecological Compensation of Poyang Lake Wetland, China: A Household-Level Survey," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-15, September.
    11. Bett, H.K. & Peters, K.J. & Nwankwo, U.M. & Bokelmann, W., 2013. "Estimating consumer preferences and willingness to pay for the underutilised indigenous chicken products," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 218-225.
    12. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    13. Song, Wei-Ling & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2016. "TARP announcement, bank health, and borrowers’ credit risk," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 22-32.
    14. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez, 2013. "Efectos de los ingresos no reportados en el nivel y tendencia de la pobreza laboral en México," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(2), pages 23-54, November.
    15. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    16. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57.
    17. Chul‐Woo Kwon & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2006. "Off‐farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 59-67, January.
    18. Jonathan Gruber & Aaron Yelowitz, 1999. "Public Health Insurance and Private Savings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1249-1274, December.
    19. Jean-Louis Arcand & Linguère M'Baye, 2013. "Braving the waves: the role of time and risk preferences in illegal migration from Senegal," CERDI Working papers halshs-00855937, HAL.
    20. Sandra Müllbacher & Wolfgang Nagl, 2017. "Labour supply in Austria: an assessment of recent developments and the effects of a tax reform," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 465-486, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:10:p:2297-:d:176817. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.