The value of cool roof as a strategy to mitigate urban heat island effect: A contingent valuation approach

摘要

The urban heat island effect in Beijing is significant, which has become a serious environmental problem posed to Beijing citizens. As an important measure to alleviate the urban heat island effect, cool roof is recommended in relevant Evaluation Standard for Green Building of China. In order to elicit policy implications, this paper investigates Beijing residents' willingness to pay for promoting cold roofs to alleviate the urban heat island effect and its determinants. This research applied double-bounded discrete choice format and face to face interview to elicit public's willingness to pay. 841 Beijing households were randomly selected and interviewed. For 242 (29%) respondents refuse to pay, the spike model was introduced to process the data for it has been proved to outperform the conventional model in dealing with zero responses. The average annual willingness to pay was computed as 1510.854 Chinese Yuan, which is 220.562 US dollars per household. In addition, In terms of the determinants of residents' willingness to pay, other than conventional demographic characteristics, we added and estimated covariance with regard to environmental knowledge and the theory of planned behavior. The result indicated that social norm, perceived behavior control, and previous knowledge of urban heat island effect and cool roof are statistical significantly related with residents' willingness to pay. This research suggests that timely information disclosure with regard to urban environment management and pro environment education are urgently needed in promoting public participation in alleviating the urban heat island effect. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.