A Study On Air Quality Valuation Based On The Use Of Subjective Well-being

As environmental problems of air and water pollution have been reported frequently in these years,the hazards of environment pollution have been revealed to the public gradually and attracted much attention.It is no doubt that people's life and work are profoundly influenced by the environmental pollution.To measure the values of environmental quality precisely,LSA method is used in this paper with the comparison of the existing valuation methods of environmental pollution.The data we used is from Chinese General Social Survey(CGSS)during 2010 to 2013.Based on LSA method and data form CGSS,we calculate the willingness to pay for the cancellation of environmental pollution.In the regression model,subjective well-being released by CGSS is taken as the dependent variable,and moreover,the average air pollution index(API)and air pollution-days in a year which are used to measured air pollution are taken as explanatory variables.Based on Ordered Probit model,the empirical analysis finds that the average API has negative impacts on subjective well-being.We further find that if average API is decreased by one point a day economic benefits of the residents would be increased by 2134.82 RMB.The average WTP of residents is about 838.37 RMB in order to reduce one day of air pollution in a year.The impacts of environmental pollution on different groups are obviously different.Through sub-sample regressions,this paper finds that there are big gaps in WTP of residents.By contrast,the rural population,residents from central and western regions and the old people are more sensitive to air pollution,and their WTP of reducing one point of API are 8%,5.82%and 6.6%of their income respectively much higher than the average WTP of residents from the urban and eastern part and young people.On the contrary,the differences in the WTP of residents with different genders and health conditions are not apparent.Moreover,the WTP to improve the air quality measured by income is not full of progressive.The middle-income group has higher WTP than the low-income group,while the WTP of high-income group is only 2.66%of their income.