Monday, January 23, 2012

Willingness to Pay for Ancillary Benefits of Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract: Assessing the Willingness to Pay (WTP) of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs. This paper contributes to the literature on the WTP for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating, in addition to global benefits, the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation. It does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies. The Contingent Valuation Method is used to elicit the WTP for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the Basque Country, Spain. Results show that WTP estimates are 53–73% higher when ancillary benefits are considered.

by Alberto Longo, David Hoyos and Anil Markandya
Environmental and Resource Economics via SpringerLink www.SpringerLink.com
Volume 51, Number 1; December, 2011; pages 119-140

1 comment:

  1. The discussion of ancillary benefits has become very important in relation to the development of climate change policy. Reducing CO2 emissions from, for example, the transport sector would also produce a reduction of other air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides and particulates, which are emitted together with CO2 as a byproduct of fuel combustion. These secondary reductions would result in a diminution of urban air pollution, thus generating health improvements to the local communities. These health benefits, additional and secondary to the primary policy goal of CO2 abatement, are the ancillary benefits.

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