Households' willingness to pay for green roof for mitigating heat island effects in Beijing (China)

Abstract

Urban heat island is one of the most notorious climate features of urbanization, and is becoming a serious environmental problem of Beijing. To help alleviate this problem, the Beijing government plans to promote the construction of urban green roofs at a rate of 100,000–120,000 m2 per year from 2015 to 2020. Since there has been limited attention on the economic benefits of mitigating this phenomenon, this paper empirically investigates the willingness of Beijing residents to pay for the benefits of green roofs in mitigating the urban heat island effects and their determinants. The data were obtained from a contingent valuation survey using a double-bounded discrete choice format. Since a large number of zero responses (comprising 57% of all respondents) appeared in our research, we used the spike model to process the data. The results show that the spike model fits our data well. The average household is willing to pay 148.582 Chinese yuan per year. Moreover, other than the conventional determinants of respondents' income and education, factors identified by the theory of planned behavior - such as attitude, perceived behavioral control, and social norm - can significantly affect respondents’ willingness to pay. This paper suggests that enhancing government credibility will be of great importance in promoting public participation in mitigating urban heat island effect.