Willingness to Pay for Sponge City Developments : A Perceived Value Perspective

Rapid urbanization and global climate change have led to urban flooding and water shortages all over the world. To deal with the urban flooding and water quality issues, China has introduced an initiative of sponge city nationally to optimize urban water ecosystem. Based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study investigates the pathway to improve the public willingness to pay (WTP) for the sponge city development from the perspective of perceived value. Guyuan City, one of the pilot sponge cities in China, is chosen as the case, and a questionnaire survey is distributed within the affected communities with 656 respondents. Under the framework of planned behavior, the results showed that (1) there is no direct influence from perceived value and subjective norms to WTP; (2) perceived value is positively associated with WTP through public attitude and perceived behavioral control indirectly; (3) 11% surcharge of domestic water price is accepted for the sponge city development. In addition, this study reveals that public attitude acts as the mediator between perceived value, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and WTP. There are practical implications for government and developers to optimize financing and operation. As a result, the sustainability performance of sponge city is improved