Abstract
This study uses a field experiment involving 251 adult participants to determine which messages related to climate change, extreme weather events, and decaying infrastructure are most effective in encouraging people to pay more for investments that could alleviate future water-quality risks. The experiment also assesses whether people prefer the investments to be directed toward gray or green infrastructure projects. Messages about global warming induced climate change and decaying infrastructure lead to larger contributions than messages about extreme weather events. The results suggest that people are likely to pay more for green infrastructure projects than for gray infrastructure projects.
Highlights
This study uses a field experiment involving 251 adult participants to determine which messages related to climate change, extreme weather events, and decaying infrastructure are most effective in encouraging people to pay more for investments that could alleviate future water-quality risks
The other three treatments kept the language related to The Conservation Fund (TCF) and American Water Works Association (AWWA) the same and changed the message related to weather events: Treatment A – Baseline generic message: “A donation to the Conservation Fund to help pay for green infrastructure investments that will protect drinking water quality when storms occur
Treatment C – Extreme events resulting from human-caused, global-warming message: “A donation to the Conservation Fund to help pay for green infrastructure investments that will protect drinking water quality when storms occur with increasing frequency due to human caused, global warming induced climate change
Summary
Our study is similar to Bulte et al.’s (2005) analysis of whether alternative causes of an environmental problem affect peoples’ WTP to resolve it; we employ a revealed-preference model of WTP instead of the hypothetical discrete choice model they used. Bulte et al (2005) presented.
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