A Study On Beijing's Residents' WTP To Environment Benefits Of The Project For Combating Sandstorm Affecting Beijing-Tianjin Metropolitan Region

With the high speed of economic development, the increase of population and the speedup of urbanization, the impact of resources and environment to society and economy increasingly emerge. Correctly evaluating environmental benefit is important for people to realize and deal with the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, as well as the foundation of sustainable developmental harmonious society.This paper applies two-bounded dichotomous choice model of contingent valuation method, to study willingness to pay (WTP) of Beijing's residents to the Project for Combating Sandstorm affecting Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan region, evaluate environmental benefit of Beijing's air quality improvement from the Project, and discuss the possibility leeward beneficial regions afford ecological compensation to windward regions.Through 723 households' questionnaires by random sample from Beijing's city zone, suburb and exurb, the econometric result applied Logit model of two-bounded dichotomous choice model of CVM shows that: if the implement of the Project (2001-2010), the weather of Beijing's air quality from March to May reach even exceed second-class increase 30%, through leeward beneficial regions afford ecological compensation to windward regions, Beijing's residents each household are willing to pay five- year period environmental tax 95 yuan per year. As 4.1 million households of Beijing's residents to compute, Beijing's residents' overall WTP each year are about 0.39 billion yuan and 5 years overall environmental tax are 1.95 billion yuan. Residents' WTP are effected by resident's income and realization level to environment, and are also depended on resident's trust level to government.Positive study result shows that two-bounded dichotomous choice model of contingent valuation method can be entirely applied in China successfully; that it is feasible for leeward beneficial regions to afford intersectional ecological compensation to windward regions in the Project for Combating Sandstorm affecting Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan region; and that increasing resident's income and strengthening environmental propaganda education will be help to improve environmental quality.