Study On The Influence Of Individual Heterogeneity To The Voluntary Provision Of Environmental Public Goods

Looked from the social public welfare, many products and services which are provided byenvironment have public goods attribute. The environmental questions mainly also due to theenvironment's public goods characteristic. According to the rational choice theory, in theenvironment goods supplies, the individual is easy to be free-driver. But in the really society,there are still many successful cases which environmental goods can be supplied by voluntary.Both complete free-rider and cooperation supplies theory cannot comprehensively explain theactualsituation. Regarding this, there are some explanations, for instance, the individual makes amistake, regarding as the individual cooperation behavior is the individual under the non-rationalwrong behavior; Also someone's explanation is the individual existing heterogeneity, the person'sdifference makes the individual has the difference to measure the cost-benefit. In fact, in thecollective action, the individual behavior is influenced by very many factors, and the individualheterogeneity is the important influence factor. There are many methods to study the individualheterogeneity. Nowadays, the study on the individual heterogeneity and voluntary provision ofpublic goods mainly lies on theory and cases. This paper introduces the individual difference ofwillingness to pay to study the influence of individual heterogeneity and in order to explain howindividual heterogeneity affects the voluntary provision of environmental public goods, the paperanalyses the influence factors for pay or not and how much to pay.This paper mainly analyzes the influence of individual heterogeneity to voluntary provisionof environmental goods through theory and case study. Firstly, it introduces the domestic andforeign research situation, and after understanding individual heterogeneity, it discusses theenvironmental goods attribute and its most superior supplies determination, after that, this paperuses willingness to pay method to analysis the influence of individual heterogeneity to voluntaryprovision of environmental goods. On the explanation of willingness to pay, it studies therelationship with a model study. In order to explain the important of individual heterogeneity tovoluntary provision of environmental goods, this paper takes the willingness to pay for east lakewater quality as a case to study how individual heterogeneity affects environmental goods. Aftertheory and case study, we can conclude as following:(1) The domestic and foreign scholars study individual heterogeneity in the public goodsprovision from the individual different share of wealth, difference of time preference.etc. Thispaper uses willingness to pay method to study individual heterogeneity. As under the UtilityTheory, different individual has different willingness to pay for certain environmental goods, and willingness to pay method shows the different preference to environment quality, so we can usethis method to study the individual heterogeneity.(2) On the basis study of the domestic and foreign scholars' research, combine the case andtheory study, we design the affecting factors of individual heterogeneity to environmental goodsprovision. The factors including: individual (or family) income; demographic factors, such asgender, sex, age, family size.etc; the attitude to nowadays environmental goods, for instance, thesatisfaction to a certain environmental goods; other factors if need, for example, to study a rivewater quality, we should think of the distance to the river.This research can help related government departments to realize the affecting factor forresidents' environment improvement choice, and which can provide them some references toconstitute related policies. But there are still some defects in this paper. The future research mayincrease the quantity of effective samples, optimize the proportion of each kind of sample. Aboutthe choice of affecting factors and the method of quantification, we can improve it and to make itperfect, we also can do that to the questionnaire. The research can also be perfect if we canconsider other methods.