IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i11p6745-d829196.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Tightening Regulations on the Use of Toluene, a Hazardous Chemical, in South Korea

Author

Listed:
  • So-Yeon Park

    (Risk Assessment Division, Environmental Health Research Department, National Institute of Environmental Research, Incheon 22689, Korea)

  • Ju-Hee Kim

    (Department of Future Energy Convergence, College of Creativity and Convergence Studies, Seoul National University of Science & Technology, Seoul 01811, Korea)

  • Jungkwan Seo

    (Risk Assessment Division, Environmental Health Research Department, National Institute of Environmental Research, Incheon 22689, Korea)

  • Seung-Hoon Yoo

    (Department of Future Energy Convergence, College of Creativity and Convergence Studies, Seoul National University of Science & Technology, Seoul 01811, Korea)

Abstract

The South Korean government currently designates toluene as a hazardous chemical, only limiting its use in products that are feared to be harmful. Since no measures to prohibit the use of toluene have been implemented, toluene is frequently detected in amounts that exceed the limit. Accordingly, the Government is considering implementing a plan to tighten the current regulations related to the use of toluene to prevent the occurrence of diseases caused by exposure and addiction to it. Therefore, the most important objective of this research is to evaluate quantitatively the economic benefits arising from the implementation of the plan in South Korea. To achieve the purpose of this paper, contingent valuation, an economic technique for analyzing data collected from a survey of people based on economic theory, is applied. For this purpose, a survey of 1000 people nationwide is conducted, and an analysis model that is well received in the literature is adopted. In other words, the annual willingness to pay (WTP) per household to strengthen the regulations to reduce the human health risks of toluene is evaluated to calculate its economic benefits. All the estimated WTP models secure statistical significance. The average WTP per household per annum is derived as KRW 3394 (USD 3.02). Considering that the country contained 20,573,060 households in 2021, the national economic benefits are calculated as KRW 69.82 billion (USD 62.23 million) every year. It is difficult to estimate accurately the costs incurred by tightening the regulations on toluene use, but they do not seem to exceed the benefits. Because tightening the regulations would be socially desirable, the Government would be justified in making this decision.

Suggested Citation

  • So-Yeon Park & Ju-Hee Kim & Jungkwan Seo & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2022. "Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Tightening Regulations on the Use of Toluene, a Hazardous Chemical, in South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-15, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:11:p:6745-:d:829196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6745/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6745/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph A. Herriges, 1999. "Measuring Goodness of Fit for the Double-Bounded Logit Model: Comment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 81(1), pages 231-234.
    2. Corso, Phaedra S & Hammitt, James K & Graham, John D, 2001. "Valuing Mortality-Risk Reduction: Using Visual Aids to Improve the Validity of Contingent Valuation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 165-184, September.
    3. Rong Liu & Xiaojun Liu & Bingbing Pan & Hui Zhu & Zhaokang Yuan & Yuanan Lu, 2018. "Willingness to Pay for Improved Air Quality and Influencing Factors among Manufacturing Workers in Nanchang, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-11, May.
    4. Dimitrios Kalfas & Fotios Chatzitheodoridis & Efstratios Loizou & Katerina Melfou, 2022. "Willingness to Pay for Urban and Suburban Green," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-21, February.
    5. Ian J. Bateman & Brett H. Day & Diane P. Dupont & Stavros Georgiou, 2009. "Procedural Invariance Testing of the One-and-One-Half-Bound Dichotomous Choice Elicitation Method," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(4), pages 806-820, November.
    6. Jesse Kaczmarski & Benjamin Jones & Janie Chermak, 2022. "Determinants of Demand Response Program Participation: Contingent Valuation Evidence from a Smart Thermostat Program," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-18, January.
    7. Joseph C. Cooper & Michael Hanemann & Giovanni Signorello, 2002. "One-and-One-Half-Bound Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 742-750, November.
    8. Petr Mariel & David Hoyos & Jürgen Meyerhoff & Mikolaj Czajkowski & Thijs Dekker & Klaus Glenk & Jette Bredahl Jacobsen & Ulf Liebe & Søren Bøye Olsen & Julian Sagebiel & Mara Thiene, 2021. "Environmental Valuation with Discrete Choice Experiments," SpringerBriefs in Economics, Springer, number 978-3-030-62669-3, October.
    9. Edgardo Sica & Roberta Sisto & Naomi di Santo, 2022. "Are Potential Tourists Willing to Pay More for Improved Accessibility? Preliminary Evidence from the Gargano National Park," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, January.
    10. Lingxia Xu & Wanyun Xu & Chao Jiang & Huxuan Dai & Qiaoqi Sun & Kun Cheng & Chun-Hung Lee & Cheng Zong & Jianzhang Ma, 2022. "Evaluating Communities’ Willingness to Participate in Ecosystem Conservation in Southeast Tibetan Nature Reserves, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-18, January.
    11. Katherine Stackelberg & James Hammitt, 2009. "Use of Contingent Valuation to Elicit Willingness-to-Pay for the Benefits of Developmental Health Risk Reductions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 43(1), pages 45-61, May.
    12. Krinsky, Itzhak & Robb, A Leslie, 1986. "On Approximating the Statistical Properties of Elasticities," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(4), pages 715-719, November.
    13. Hye-Jeong Lee & Hyo-Jin Kim & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2018. "The Public Willingness to Pay for Reducing the Incidence of Hazardous Chemical Spill Accidents by Half in South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-15, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Koo, A Mi & Kim, Ju-Hee & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2022. "Household willingness to pay for a smart water metering and monitoring system: The case of South Korea," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ju-Hee Kim & Seul-Ye Lim & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2022. "A Price Premium for the District Heating System: An Empirical Investigation on South Korean Residents," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-10, June.
    2. Koo, A Mi & Kim, Ju-Hee & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2022. "Household willingness to pay for a smart water metering and monitoring system: The case of South Korea," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Kim, Hyo-Jin & Lee, Hye-Jeong & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2018. "Are South Korean people willing to pay for official development assistance for building renewable power plants in developing countries?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 626-632.
    4. Rodgers Makwinja & Ishmael Bobby Mphangwe Kosamu & Chikumbusko Chiziwa Kaonga, 2019. "Determinants and Values of Willingness to Pay for Water Quality Improvement: Insights from Chia Lagoon, Malawi," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-26, August.
    5. Massimo Filippini & Adán L. Martínez-Cruz, 2016. "Impact of environmental and social attitudes, and family concerns on willingness to pay for improved air quality: a contingent valuation application in Mexico City," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 25(1), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Park, Seong-Ju & Kim, Ju-Hee & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2023. "Utilization of early retiring coal-fired power plants as a cold reserve in South Korea: A public perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    7. Kim, Ju-Hee & Lim, Seul-Ye & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2021. "Public preferences for introducing a power-to-heat system in South Korea," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    8. Kim, Ju-Hee & Han, Su-Mi & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2023. "Price premium for green hydrogen in South Korea: Evidence from a stated preference study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 647-655.
    9. Robert J. Johnston & Kevin J. Boyle & Wiktor (Vic) Adamowicz & Jeff Bennett & Roy Brouwer & Trudy Ann Cameron & W. Michael Hanemann & Nick Hanley & Mandy Ryan & Riccardo Scarpa & Roger Tourangeau & Ch, 2017. "Contemporary Guidance for Stated Preference Studies," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(2), pages 319-405.
    10. Kwak, So-Yoon & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2015. "The public’s value for developing ocean energy technology in the Republic of Korea: A contingent valuation study," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 432-439.
    11. Lee, Juyong & Cho, Youngsang, 2020. "Estimation of the usage fee for peer-to-peer electricity trading platform: The case of South Korea," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    12. Kim, GwanSeon & Petrolia, Daniel R. & Interis, Matthew G., 2012. "A Method for Improving Welfare Estimates from Multiple-Referendum Surveys," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 37(2), pages 1-12, August.
    13. Lee, Gunwoo & Kim, Soo-Yeob & Lee, Min-Kyu, 2015. "Economic evaluation of vessel traffic service (VTS): A contingent valuation study," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 149-154.
    14. Lim, Seul-Ye & Kim, Hyo-Jin & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2017. "Public's willingness to pay a premium for bioethanol in Korea: A contingent valuation study," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 20-27.
    15. Richard T. Carson, 2011. "Contingent Valuation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2489.
    16. Corsi, Alessandro, 2012. "Willingness-to-pay in terms of price: an application to organic beef during and after the “mad cow” crisis," Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, Editions NecPlus, vol. 92(01), pages 25-46, October.
    17. Ju-Hee Kim & Ga-Eun Kim & Seung-Hoon Yoo, 2018. "A Valuation of the Restoration of Hwangnyongsa Temple in South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-7, January.
    18. Abou-Ali, Hala & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2004. "Evaluating the welfare effects of improved water quality using the choice experiment method," Working Papers in Economics 131, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    19. Song, Tae-Ho & Lim, Kyoung-Min & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2015. "Estimating the public’s value of implementing the CO2 emissions trading scheme in Korea," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 82-86.
    20. Granado-Díaz, Rubén & Villanueva, Anastasio J. & Gómez-Limón, José A., 2022. "Willingness to accept for rewilding farmland in environmentally sensitive areas," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).

    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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:11:p:6745-:d:829196. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.