Willingness-to-Pay of Students for a Green Apartment Building

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of students for a green apartment building. The sample building was a 36-floor apartment building with 407 rooms and a total floor area of 32,388.18 m2 (average 73 m2/room). The sample building was assessed to gain points from various measures according to TREES-NC v. 1.1, Thailand’s green building rating system. Green building measures were implemented in the following order: pre-requisites, measures with no investment, and measures with investment. Revenues were obtained from energy and water savings. Increased investment costs in green building measures were calculated and assumed that the tenants would absorb these costs. Cost savings and increased investment costs were used to create questions in the questionnaire. Double-bounded, close-ended contingent valuation method (CVM) was selected to be the assessment method. The surveyed samples were students at Silpakorn University, Sanam Chandra Palace Campus, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand. It was found that 99.5% of the samples were willing to pay more rent for a green apartment with an average value of 4.08 USD/month or around 3.85% more.