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Residents’ Willingness to Pay for Water Pollution Treatment and Its Influencing Factors: a Case Study of Taihu Lake Basin

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Abstract

This study designs a double-bounded dichotomous questionnaire, and uses the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to estimate residents’ willingness to pay(WTP) for water pollution control along the Taihu Lake Basin. The results of the returned questionnaire show that 82.76% of the residents are willing to pay. CVM estimation results show that the average WTP of residents for water pollution control is 138.86 yuan/year. In addition, the influencing factors of WTP are explored using a Logistic regression model, and the heterogeneity of WTP among residents of different genders is analyzed. The study found that: (1) The younger the residents, the higher their WTP; (2) The higher the income, the higher the residents’ WTP for water pollution control; (3) Residents with higher educational level are more willing to pay; (4) The higher the degree of residents’ understanding of water pollution control policies, the higher the WTP; (5) The higher the degree of residents’ recognition of pro-environmental behavior, the higher the WTP; (6) Male residents’ WTP is mainly affected by cognitive factors such as their understanding of governance policies and their approval of pro-environmental behaviors, while female residents’ WTP is mainly affected by personal attributes, such as age, income, and the number of household laborers. Furthermore, this study proposes targeted measures to improve residents’ WTP from three aspects: the government enriches the channels for residents to participate in water pollution control, the social media enriches the popularization of water environment knowledge, and the school strengthens the education of environmental protection knowledge, considering the differences in residents’ characteristics. Therefore, this study can provide a theoretical reference and decision-making basis for encouraging residents to participate in water pollution control, promote the construction of a beautiful watershed, and provide a reference for other basins.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Social Science fund of Jiangsu Province (21GLB007); MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (21YJCZH139); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71704068), and Key Research Base of Universities in Jiangsu Province for Philosophy and Social Science “Research Center for Green Development and Environmental Governance” is highly appreciated by researchers of this study. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

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  1. School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Zhaolin Ouyang & Dongying Sun

  2. College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Gang Liu

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  1. Zhaolin Ouyang
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  2. Dongying Sun
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Zhaolin Ouyang: Data curation, Software, Validation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Dongying Sun: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing, Investigation. Gang Liu: Writing- Reviewing and Editing. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dongying Sun.

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Ouyang, Z., Sun, D. & Liu, G. Residents’ Willingness to Pay for Water Pollution Treatment and Its Influencing Factors: a Case Study of Taihu Lake Basin. Environmental Management (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-01968-4

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