Valuation of Haze Management and Prevention Using the Contingent Valuation Method with the Sure Independence Screening Algorithm

Assessing the Public Health Economic Loss from PM2.5 Pollution in '2 + 26' Cities

Due to the fast growth of China's economy, urban atmospheric pollution has become a serious problem affecting the public's physical and mental health. The '2 + 26' cities, as the Jing-Jin-Ji atmospheric pollution transmission channel, has attracted widespread concern. There were several previous studies on the economic loss of public health caused by PM_2.5 pollution in '2 + 26' cities. To assess the economic loss caused by PM_2.5 on human health in '2 + 26' cities, this paper used the exposure-response model, the health effect loss model and willingness to pay method to obtain the economic loss from PM_2.5 pollution with the latest available data in 2020. It was concluded that, in 2020, the economic loss of '2 + 26' cities from PM_2.5 was spatially distributed low in the east and high in the west. In addition, it was larger in the southern and northern part, which was smaller in the middle of the region. Based on the conclusions, policy recommendations were put forward.

Effects of haze pollution on pesticide use by rice farmers: fresh evidence from rural areas of China

Recently, severe haze pollution has not only threatened human health and food security, but also seems to have aggravated the unscientific use of pesticides by rice farmers in rural areas of China. Using original data on haze pollution across China, combined with rural household survey data collected from 2014 to 2018, we conducted a detailed empirical study on the effects of haze pollution on pesticide use by rice farmers based on the theory of risk aversion. The empirical results revealed that haze pollution with higher levels of PM2.5 positively impacted the use of chemical pesticides in rice cultivation. More precisely, with each 100% increase in PM2.5 concentrations, the use of pesticide per mu increased by 7.9%, and the average pesticide cost per mu increased by 2.3%. The results were robust to a series of tests that addressed potential endogeneity concerns, including omitted variable bias, measurement error, and reverse causality. We then examined the heterogeneous effects of haze pollution increases on the use of chemical pesticides and found that for rice farmers without rice insurance, haze pollution has a stronger effect on pesticide use and a weaker effect on pesticide cost. However, for rice farmers with more experience in rice cultivation and small-scale rice planting, the effect of haze pollution on pesticide use and cost is relatively small. Our findings provide important policy implications for pesticide risk management in rural areas of developing countries.

Economic Valuation of Public Meteorological Information Services—A Case Study of Agricultural Producers in Taiwan

Most meteorological information services in Taiwan are currently provided by the Central Weather Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications. As agricultural production activities are sensitive to weather and climate conditions, meteorological information services are more important for agricultural decision-makers than those in other sectors. This study uses the contingent valuation method to estimate the economic value of meteorological information services in Taiwan for agricultural producers. We assess the agricultural producers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the meteorological information services, conducting a national face-to-face survey of 400 registered farmers in 20 municipalities in Taiwan in 2013. The results show the adjusted WTP for every agricultural household each year with a 95% confidence interval which ranges from 56.06 US dollars to 90.92 US dollars. The inferred annual economic value of meteorological information services for agricultural producers in Taiwan is between 28.06 million US dollars and 45.51 million US dollars. Moreover, the agricultural producers’ subjective assessment of weather forecast accuracy, farm size, and first bid price significantly affect the amount agricultural producers are willing to pay for meteorological information services.

Recency and projection biases in air quality valuation by Chinese residents

We combine survey responses to subjective well-being (SWB) questions with air pollution data to recover Chinese residents' valuation of air quality improvements. Motivated by theoretical models of 'projection bias' and 'recency bias', we posit that one's SWB (and valuation) is affected disproportionately by more recent experiences with air pollution, even though long-term air pollution is more detrimental to one's actual well-being. Towards this end, we find that valuation for a unit improvement in PM_2.5 is twice as large when air quality on the day of survey is used as the explanatory variable compared to air quality averaged over a year. Our findings have far-reaching research and policy implications as they call into question the appropriate temporal scale of air quality conditions when conducting valuation studies or policy evaluations. Furthermore, our results imply that policymakers could conceivably exploit this behavioral bias to introduce more stringent air quality management policies when air quality is extremely poor.

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

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.