Relationship between Objective and Subjective Atmospheric Visibility and Its Influence on Willingness to Accept or Pay in China

This study is to distinguish the objective and subjective measures of atmospheric visibility, and investigate the relationship between the two measures as well as the effect on the people’s behavioral intentions on air pollution in China. A mixed method was adopted in this study combining both lab experiments to measure objective atmospheric visibility and a questionnaire survey to measure subjective atmospheric visibility. The regression results show that: (a) The people’s perception of atmospheric visibility is based on objective information about the ambient air (Relative Humidity, PM(2.5), Atmospheric Visibility) and there are some turning points that could enable people to distinguish good and poor air quality; (b) The people’s perception of visibility has a significant effect on either their willingness-to-accept (WTA) the visibility or on their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for improving the air quality; (c) The subjective atmospheric visibility also mediates the effect of objective measures on WTA or WTP; (d) The higher the level of pro-environmental attitude is, the more people will pay to improve the air quality, and this effect is much stronger than that effect of perception; and (e) The respondents from North China Plain, Yangtze River Delta and the relative clean areas have higher level of perception.