Estimates of Willingness to Pay for Pollution-Induced Changes in Morbidity: A Critique for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Pollution Regulation. Executive Summary

摘要

Critique of existing literature on the willingness to pay, by indivduals and by society, for changes in morbidity. The critique concentrates on empirical analyses. Four approaches are examined: (1) health production function studies that specify a relationship between a person's health and his expenditures of time and money in response to and for prevention of illness; (2) cost of illness studies that estimate primarily the medical expenditures and income lost due to being sick; (3) contingent valuation surveys designed to elicit willingness to pay (or accept) from individual respondents; and (4) health status indexes from the psychology and public health literature that typically involve a subjective weighting or ranking of different states of health. The practicality of each approach is evaluated along with factors that influence each measure and its conceptual appropriateness for valuing changes in morbidity. Tentative conclusions are offered regarding potential usefulness of the approaches for evaluating morbidity changes expected from pollution control.