Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Luechinger, Simon
• 署名单位: University of Zurich; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02241.x
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 482-515
• 关键词: happiness; income; pollution; utility; preferences; valuation; climate; matter; money; wages

摘要

I use the life satisfaction approach to value air quality, combining individual-level panel and high-resolution SO2 data. To avoid simultaneity problems, I construct a novel instrument exploiting the natural experiment created by the mandated scrubber installation at power plants, with wind directions dividing counties into treatment and control groups. I find a negative effect of pollution on well-being that is larger for instrumental variable than conventional estimates, robust to controls for local unemployment, particulate pollution, reunification effects and rural/urban trends, and larger for environmentalists and predicted risk groups. To calculate total willingness-to-pay, the estimates are supplemented by hedonic housing regressions.