The Public’s Willingness To Pay For Different Clean Energies

China, as one of the major energy consumers, undertakes responsibility for reducing carbon emissions. The promotion of clean energy still lags behind the growth of economic development. Under such backgrounds, it is a top priority to adjust energy consumption structure. The development of clean energy attracts wide concerns from the government and the public.Based on the Contingent Valuation Method, this study evaluates the public Willingness to Pay (WTP) of clean energy. Five aspects have been included in the questionnaire including cognition level and acceptance level of clean energy, WTP, preference of different clean energies and socio-economic status. Probit model is employed to evaluate contributory factors of respondents’ WTP. Open-ended scenarios through surveys are used to elicit public’s WTP and estimate the specific WTP level of those with nonzero WTP values. Meanwhile, we subdivide clean energy into five types (wind, hydro, nuclear, solar, biomass) to estimates public WTP and public preferences over different clean energies.The main conclusions are as follows:first, public’s cognition level of clean energy is relatively low. At the same time, public cannot effectively distinguish characteristics of different clean energies. Second, Respondents with high cognition level, high education and high income preferred higher WTP amounts to lower WTP amounts. Unmarried people had a higher WTP, while acceptance level, age, family numbers do not produce considerable impacts on WTP. So public participation should be encouraged and public awareness should be enhanced. Third, the WTP ranges from RMB 37.20 yuan/month to 49.64yuan/month on average, accounting for a value from 1.53% to 2.04% in terms of income in Shandong province. Finally, people showed the highest preference over solar power (29.52% of total WTP) while the lowest preference over nuclear power (12.66% of total WTP).There was no significant differences among the WTP of wind, hydro and biomass. Further social surveys will provide sufficient results to policy makers.