Abstract
Oil spill accidents involving cars or boats for transport in rivers can contaminate drinking water sources. During the past ten years, an annual average of forty-six cases of oil spill accidents have occurred in Korean rivers. Because of this, the Korean government is seeking to reduce the incidence of oil spill accidents in rivers by half. This article aims to evaluate the public value of the reduction. Household willingness to pay (WTP) for the reduction was investigated, applying the contingent valuation approach. A survey of 1000 households was carried out in Korea. The data on the WTP were gathered using a dichotomous choice question and analyzed employing the spike model. The mean WTP estimate is obtained as KRW 6188 (USD 5.28) per household per annum, which is statistically meaningful. The total public value expanded to the population amounts to KRW 120.8 billion (USD 103.0 million) per year. The information can be utilized in policy-making and decision-making about the reduction of the incidence of oil spill accidents in rivers by half.
Highlights
Oil spill accidents in rivers can cause an immediate and devastating effect on wildlife and the ecosystem, and can be harmful to the health of the residents in the impacted area, since they can pollute drinking water sources
The list of bids was determined through the focus group interview of thirty individuals as follows: first, we asked the willingness to pay (WTP) for the reduction and obtained a set of WTP values; second, we deleted zero WTP values and sorted the remaining positive WTP values to look into empirical distribution; third, some bids were selected from the distribution
Because the spike implies the possibility of the interviewee having zero WTP, the estimated spike should not be significantly different from the sample ratio of zero WTP (48.0%)
Summary
Oil spill accidents in rivers can cause an immediate and devastating effect on wildlife and the ecosystem, and can be harmful to the health of the residents in the impacted area, since they can pollute drinking water sources. Oil can contain more than one hundred contaminants, all of which are hazardous and toxic substances [1]. If humans and animals are exposed to these substances, they may cause various diseases, such as cancer, genotoxicity, fetal growth defects, cardiovascular disease, DNA adducts in fish, bioaccumulation, and so on [1,2,3,4,5]. We anticipate increasing oil spills and human and social damage due to crowding. According to recent statistics, during the past decade, an annual average of 46 oil spill accidents have occurred in Korean rivers [6]
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