Willingness to Pay for Contaminated Site Cleanup Policies : Evidence from a Conjoint Choice Study in Italy

We use conjoint choice experiments to study the preferences of people living in areas with contaminated sites in Italy for public programs that would address the human health risks associated with these sites. The attributes of the alternative (and hypothetical) programs shown to our survey respondents are the size of the mortality risk reductions, the size of the population affected by the program, the timing of the risk reduction, the number of years the risk reduction would be experienced for, and the cost to the respondent?s household. The responses to the choice questions satisfy scope requirements and show that people care? and are willing to pay more for? for risk reductions sustained over a long time. This in turn implies a preference for permanent remediation. People discount future risk reductions at a rate of about 6.25%.