Abstract
The main objective of this study is to estimate the monetary value of the gains of healthy days and life expectancy due to the ambient air quality standard that came into effect in 2014 by estimating the country-specific value of a life year (VOLY) and the value of the healthier and longer life (VHLL) for Turkey. Contingent valuation method is adopted to reveal individuals’ willingness to pay for an improvement of health condition and the extension of their life expectancy by avoiding respiratory and lung related illnesses. VHLL is composed of two parts, WTP for an extension of one’s life years (VOLY) and for an increase in the number of healthy days throughout one’s life time (VHLL-VOLY). We found that close to 80% of WTP is allocated to the latter component of VHLL and only 20% is for VOLY mainly due to Islamic beliefs of the respondents. A total of 1314 observations are collected by face-to-face interviews from Afsin-Elbistan, Kutahya-Tavsanli and Ankara. The estimated VHLL and VOLY are [41,750 TL, 10,258 TL] with all the observations, [30,185 TL, 7132 TL] for Afsin-Elbistan, [31,718 TL, 7081 TL] for Kutahya-Tavsanli and [52,334 TL, 14,813 TL] for Ankara. The Inverse-U shaped relationship between Age and WTP is confirmed. The income elasticities of WTP is found to be close to 0.5 for all study areas while an Inverse-U shaped relationship between the household income and Income Elasticity of WTP is observed in the income group based analysis. Age and household income are the two prominent determinants of VHLL.
Highlights
A new ambient air quality standard has been in effect in Turkey from the beginning of year2014
Annual willingness to pay (WTP) for the rest of their life time for a healthier and an extended life expectancy by half or one year are estimated based on the total sample sizes of 514 (Half: 256,One: 258), 488 (Half: 243, One: 245) and 312 (Half: 156, One: 156) for Afsin-Elbistan, Kutahya-Tavsanli and Ankara, respectively
The first is that value of the healthier and longer life (VHLL) derived in this study includes both the value of increased healthy days throughout one’s life time and the value of an extension of the life expectancy by one year, and value of a life year (VOLY) is calculated based on the share of WTP allocated for the latter cause
Summary
A new ambient air quality standard has been in effect in Turkey from the beginning of year2014. For sulfur dioxide (SO2 ), the annual average target level is currently 20 μg/m3 , while it was 150 μg/m3 until the end of 2013. These kind of drastic improvements in environmental quality come with the costs which can be in general readily calculated, yet the necessary evaluations of benefits of such positive changes in the environmental quality are largely missing in Turkey, including the impacts to human health expressed in a monetized fashion. The estimation of country-specific values for benefit calculations as well as the establishment of monetary valuation methodologies in a developing country such as in Turkey is an urgent task for proper environmental policy evaluations. An estimation of the value of a life year (VOLY)
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