IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/endeec/v20y2015i05p630-649_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The economic value of improved air quality in urban Africa: a contingent valuation survey in Douala, Cameroon

Author

Listed:
  • Donfouet, Hermann Pythagore Pierre
  • Cook, Joseph
  • Jeanty, P. Wilner

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of ‘time to think’ and ‘ballot box’ on willingness-to-pay, while providing the first empirical evidence on assessing the benefits of an air quality improvement program in urban Africa. Our hypothetical referendum scenario proposes to reduce the air pollution related morbidity rate in Douala, Cameroon by 25 per cent in exchange for a one-time surcharge on the electricity bill of each respondent. We find that on average WTP decreases by nearly one-fourth when allocating respondents time to think but markedly increases when we use a ‘ballot box’ approach allowing respondents to state their willingness privately. Our results suggest that on average households are willing to pay US$0.42 per month (0.2 per cent of household annual income). We conclude that total citywide benefits are unlikely to exceed the costs of implementing such a program at this point, although this situation may change quickly with increasing economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Donfouet, Hermann Pythagore Pierre & Cook, Joseph & Jeanty, P. Wilner, 2015. "The economic value of improved air quality in urban Africa: a contingent valuation survey in Douala, Cameroon," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(5), pages 630-649, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:endeec:v:20:y:2015:i:05:p:630-649_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1355770X14000552/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sokhna Mbathio Diallo & Abdoulaye Seck, 2023. "Air Pollution in Urban Africa: Understanding Attitudes and Economic Valuation in the Case of Dakar, Senegal," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Zhihua Xu & Jingzhu Shan, 2018. "The effect of risk perception on willingness to pay for reductions in the health risks posed by particulate matter 2.5: A case study of Beijing, China," Energy & Environment, , vol. 29(8), pages 1319-1337, December.
    3. Pan, Yuan & Marshall, Stuart & Maltby, Lorraine, 2016. "Prioritising ecosystem services in Chinese rural and urban communities," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(PA), pages 1-5.
    4. Hye-Min Kim & In-Gyum Kim & Byunghwan Lim & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2021. "Estimating the Economic Value of Improving the Asian Dust Aerosol Model in the Korean Household Sector: A Choice Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-11, November.
    5. Ga-Eun Kim & Hye-Jeong Lee & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2018. "Willingness to Pay for Substituting Coal with Natural Gas-Based Combined Heat and Power in South Korea: A View from Air Pollutants Emissions Mitigation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-12, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:endeec:v:20:y:2015:i:05:p:630-649_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ede .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.