부산시 수돗물 수질개선 편익의 추정

Valuing the Economic Benefits of the Water Quality Improvement in Busan

Water is an indispensable input to human's existence and industrial production. In these days, people are getting more concerned about their health and the interest in the safety of drinking water has increased. In this situation, this paper attempts to measure the economic benefits of the tap water quality improvement. The study area was restricted to Busan, the second largest city in Korea, where local government is planning to implement a tap water quality improvement program. We apply a one-and-one-half bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation (CV) method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits. CV is developed for valuing goods or services that cannot be valued either directly or indirectly from market observations and has been applied to several environmental goods. The CV survey was rigorously designed to comply with the guidelines for best-practiced CV studies. We surveyed a randomly selected sample of 400 households in Busan and asked respondents questions in person-to-person interviews about how they would be willing to pay for the water quality improvement. Respondents overall accepted the contingent market and were willing to contribute a significant amount (US$1.66), on average, per household per month. We can also calculate the aggregate value of the program which improves the water quality in Busan. This study is expected to provide policy-makers with useful information for evaluating and planning environmental policies relating specifically to water.