Estimating the Economic Value of Improving the Asian Dust Aerosol Model in the Korean Household Sector: A Choice Experiment

In-Gyum Kim,Hye-Min Kim,Byunghwan Lim,Seung-Hoon Yoo

doi:10.3390/su132112054

Abstract

Asian dust (AD), a seasonal phenomenon in East Asia, refers to dust winds that blow from inland China and the Gobi Desert. Generally, AD occurs in the spring, but due to climate change and the desertification of AD sources, it has recently started occurring in every season except for midsummer. The occurrence of AD adversely affects human health and damages various industries. Accordingly, the Korean Meteorological Administration has provided an AD forecast service to minimize damage. The most essential part of providing the AD forecast service is the Asian Dust Aerosol Model (ADAM). This study tries to provide useful information for policymaking and research and development by deriving the economic value of ADAM improvement. To this end, a choice experiment (CE) was applied. The CE can derive the marginal value of or the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) of improvement in attribute. All the MWTP estimates obtained in this study were statistically significant. The household MWTP estimates for a 1% improvement in ADAM accuracy and a one-level subdividing were obtained as USD 0.04 and USD 0.12 per household. This finding indicates that people have a greater preference for improving AD forecast segmentation than for improving ADAM accuracy.

Highlights

Accepted: 28 October 2021Every spring, sand dust from the Chinese inland area and the Gobi Desert has a significant impact on human health, air quality, and several industrial sectors [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] especially in eastern China, and in Korea, Japan, and even North America
According to interviewers belonging to the company, the survey was successfully conducted without any problems
The fact that the public’s concern with air quality has increased in recent years seems to have helped respondents concentrate on this survey that related to Asian dust, which greatly affects air quality

Summary

Introduction

Sand dust from the Chinese inland area and the Gobi Desert has a significant impact on human health, air quality, and several industrial sectors [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] especially in eastern China, and in Korea, Japan, and even North America. This sand dust is called “Asian dust (AD)”. The study of AD’s influence on various health effects, including even mortality and suicide [1,2,3,4], has been undertaken

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Conclusion