Assessing Economic Loss Due To Haze Pollution And Investigating Willingness To Pay For Treatment In China

In recent years, China’s continuing large-scale outbreak of PM10 and PM2.5 (particulate matter) as the main form of haze weather, cause serious damage to the public health and normal life, causing huge economic losses. What is the status of China’s haze pollution? What is the characteristics and influencing factors of space agglomeration? How to evaluate the economic losses of haze bring to public life and health, and according to the evaluation results to relevant departments and regions targeted defense measures? The environmental protection department, the district government, industry have being long concerning about the focus and difficulty problem that how to evaluate the economic loss due to haze and other environmental disaster.Basing on spatial econometrics, we investigated the characteristics and analyzed the determinants of the spatial agglomeration of China’s haze pollution. Results showed that (1) haze pollution was serious and concentrated in eastern and middle China in blocks, covering 17 regions and accounting for 75% of the total population and GDP. (2)China’s PM2.5 had significant spatial correlation. (3)Total amount indicators such as GDP and population size significantly influenced PM2.5. Structural indicators such as coal consumption and waste gas emission had no significant correlation with PM2.5.The author designed the questionnaire using Direct Loss and Willingness To Pay method and then investigated 3000 families all over China. Using the Binary Logistic method to analyze the factor which can influence the pay willingness, we find that: (1) In 2014, the haze caused an average loss of 884.62 Yuan per family in China, and the total loss was 346.015 billion RMB; (2) people are willing to pay 480.88 RMB/family in the next 5 years; (3) pay willingness is not only positively correlated with the severity of haze, but also correlated with other many factors. Overall, those who living in town, above 25 year old, settling for more than 10 years are willing to pay more; factors about health and trip influence the pay willingness of high income family mostly and income is the main factor for the low income family; the aged and children’s health is the important reason urging the public to pay for haze.At last, we give countermeasures about government manage, imposing air pollution tax, push the Clean Air law and encouraging the public participation to control haze.