Economic losses and willingness to pay for haze: the data analysis based on 1123 residential families in Jiangsu province, China

Haze pollution is a key obstacle for environmental management faced by China and many other developing countries. The survey on residential families' economic losses and willingness to pay (WTP) are regarded as an essential reference for the implementation of environmental policies for haze treatment. For Jiangsu province of China, the authors of this paper first conducted three qualitative interviews with respectively meteorologists, meteorological administrators, and residents, a questionnaire was then elaborately designed, and subsequent surveys of 1123 families were administered in Jiangsu province. Further, the authors investigated measurements of direct economic losses by using the contingent valuation method (CVM) and explored influential factors of WTP by utilizing the binary logistic regression. From this survey, the estimated total economic loss incurred by haze disasters and total treatment cost for haze-related diseases were respectively 22.38 billion (in RMB) and 8.4 billion for Jiangsu province. 55.9% of residential families were willing to pay 11.6 billion RMB annually (51.97% of total loss) for haze treatment, leaving a shortage of 11.05 billion RMB, which the government is responsible to pay. These findings provide empirical information reflecting the opinions of communities and residential families, useful for the governments and industrial sectors to design environmental policies to meet the requirements of the public and control environmental pollution in an effective way to achieve sustainable development.