Willingness-to-pay for a Haze Adaptation Program and a Haze Eradication Program in Singapore: The 2015 Transboundary Haze

In Southeast Asia, the seasonal transboundary haze pollution stemming from slash-and-burn practices of traditional Indonesian farmers affects several countries in the region including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. Despite both domestic and regional efforts that have been put in place to help fight against haze, Southeast Asian haze remains a long-term issue that recurs in a varying degree of intensity during every dry season in the region. While we remain optimistic that the problem will eventually be resolved, given that most of these fires are the result of human activity, solutions can be executed successfully only in the longer run. In the interim, one of Singapore's options is to adapt. A contingent valuation (CV) survey on 793 Singapore residents was conducted in Singapore between November and December 2017 to elicit their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a haze adaptation program and a haze eradication program in Singapore. We use a double-bounded dichotomous choice CV survey design and the Kaplan-Meier-Turnbull method and the probit regression to infer the distribution of Singapore residents’ WTP for the two programs and find that they are willing to pay between S$ 46.46 and S$ 60.06 for a haze adaptation program that reduces the local impacts of haze and between S$ 51.66 and S$ 66.76 for a haze eradication program. These findings suggest that Singapore residents continue to value the government's effort to derive solutions to resolve the haze crisis that recurs intermittently.