Willingness to Pay for Public Benefit Functions of Daecheong Dam Operation: Moderating Effects of Climate Change Perceptions

Abstract

This study estimates the economic value of the Daecheong Dam for the public function of responding to climate change. It examines the moderating effect of climate change perceptions on value estimates by applying choice experiments (CE). The study specifies three dam function attributes—drought management (DM), flood control (FC), and water quality monitoring (WM)—subdivided into three levels to improve the existing conditions. Survey data from 603 households living in Daejeon, Chungbuk, and Chungnam have been collected to perform the CE. Subsequently, two clusters—high-involvement and low-involvement groups—have been extracted, based on the climate change perception index. The main results of comparing the marginal willingness-to-pay between the two clusters are as follows. The attributes and price variable significantly affected the choice probability to benefit from improvements in the rational signs of the coefficients. This does not violate the independence of the irrelevant alternatives assumption. The improvement values of high-involvement and low-involvement groups are estimated as KRW 21,570 and KRW 14,572 a year per household, respectively. Both show the same value intensities in the order of WM, DM, and FC.

Estimating the Economic Values of Restricted Monoculture Eucalyptus Plantations: A Choice Modeling Approach

“…To analyze welfare, the willingness to pay of farmers for a change in attribute levels was estimated by taking the ratio between the coefficients of individual attributes and the price attribute [ 50 ]. where, = Willingness to pay for a given attribute, = Marginal utility of an attribute i , and = Estimated parameter of costs associated to the alternatives.…”