A contingent valuation study comparing citizen’s willingness-to-pay for climate change Mitigation in China and the United States

Abstract

Being the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters and economies, both the United States and China must be involved to achieve meaningful global action to address climate change. To better understand public support for climate change mitigation policy in these countries, this study employs a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey to estimate American and Chinese citizens’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for climate change action. The results show that on average, US college students and adults have similar WTP values. Chinese adults’ WTP is about three-fifths of US adults’ WTP measured in US dollars, while Chinese students’ WTP is only three-fourths of US students’ WTP. Adjusting for the significant difference in per capita income, Chinese adult and student WTP is over two times larger than that of their US counterparts. In addition, political ideology for US respondents is found to have a significant influence on WTP even when controlling for other covariates, such as environmental concern and climate change belief.