Abstract
Previous studies have paid little attention to the spatial heterogeneity of residents' marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for clean air at a city level. To fill this gap, this study adopts a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to quantify the spatial heterogeneity of residents' MWTP for clean air in Shanghai. First, Shanghai was divided into 218 census tracts and each tract was the smallest research unit. Then, the impacts of air pollutants and other built environment variables on housing prices were chosen to reflect residents' MWTP and a GWR model was used to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of the MWTP. Finally, the total losses caused by air pollutants in Shanghai were estimated from the perspective of housing market value. Empirical results show that air pollutants have a negative impact on housing prices. Using the marginal rate of transformation between housing prices and air pollutants, the results show Shanghai residents, on average, are willing to pay 50 and 99 Yuan/m2 to reduce the mean concentration of PM2.5 and NO2 by 1 μg/m3, respectively. Moreover, residents' MWTP for clean air is higher in the suburbs and lower in the city center. This study can help city policymakers formulate regional air management policies and provide support for the green and sustainable development of the real estate market in China.
Highlights
In recent years, the continuous increases in energy demand, industrial expansion, and private car ownership in megacities have led to a serious deterioration of air quality [1]
The results show that PM2.5 and NO2 have a significant negative impact on housing prices, which are consistent with Chen and Chen [54] and Dong et al [5], and the coefficients of other built environment variables are basically consistent with the theoretical and expected values
Housing prices fall as the residential property move further away from the city center and housing prices rise with the increase of the number of subway stations, schools, and other infrastructures
Summary
The continuous increases in energy demand, industrial expansion, and private car ownership in megacities have led to a serious deterioration of air quality [1]. According to the 2019 Bulletin on the State of China’s Ecology and Environment, in 2019, only 157 of 337 cities at or above the prefectural level met the air quality standard in China, while 180 cities exceeded the standard. A recent study pointed out that air pollution in Europe causes an average of 2.2 years of lost life expectancy and about 1.85 million deaths from respiratory diseases each year [7]. As northern China is dominated by coal-fired heating, the concentration of air pollutants in northern cities will be significantly higher than that in the south, which has caused the average life expectancy of residents in northern areas to decrease by 3.1 years [8].
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