Distributive Justice in Payments for Air Quality Improvement a Study Combining Factorial Survey and Choice Experiment Data

In this paper, we investigate the effect of respondents' attitudes concerning distributive justice in payments on their stated preferences for programs decreasing ambient air pollution in four cities in Poland. We propose a novel approach to considering justice attitudes in non-market valuation by combining two multi-factorial survey experiments. The first records justice attitudes towards payments (factorial survey experiment, FSE), and the second records stated preferences for air pollution reduction programs (choice experiment, CE). The FSE can single out the effect of justice dimensions and is less prone to social desirability compared with single survey items or a battery of items usually used to measure fairness concerns. As a modelling framework, we employ a hybrid choice model combining the FSE and the CE responses. Since the same respondents answered both experiments in separate surveys one to two weeks apart, a causal effect of justice attitudes on stated preferences can be derived. The results indicate a substantial effect of the justice attitude on the stated willingness to pay. The proposed approach could be used to jointly model fairness concerns and preferences in a wide range of fields, contributing further insights into their association