The benefit of management policy of Seoul on airborne particulate matter: An application of contingent valuation

There is an increasing concern on particulate matter (PM) management in Seoul. The annual mean PM concentration of Seoul is far higher than the World Health Organization guideline and its decreasing rate has been slowed since 2012. Seoul Metropolitan Government has made various efforts to solve the problem. In particular, after an open forum held in June 2017, the Ten Measures for Fine Particles were established. Since the management of fine particles would enforce a huge budget (annual mean of 146 million US dollar) it requires a legitimate validation by the benefit analysis. This paper aims to estimate the benefit of the management policy of Seoul on airborne particulate matter. The benefit is estimated by the contingent valuation method. The estimation by the Spike model shows that the annual willingness to pay (WTP) per household for the management of airborne particulate matter is 126 US dollar (or 138,107 Korean won) (95% confidence interval of 114 to 137 US dollar). The applications of the other statistical models are also analyzed. Considering the total number of households, annual benefit of the management policy of Seoul on airborne particulate matter is 492 million US dollar annually (95% confidence interval of 446 to 537 million US dollar). A simple comparison shows that the benefit of the management of airborne particulate matter in Seoul is 3~4 times higher than the incurred expense.