How Much Are People Willing to Pay for Clean Air? Analyzing Housing Prices in Response to the Smog Free Tower in Xi’an

The Smog Free Tower (SFT) in the city of Xi’an, China, is the world’s first outdoor architecture that uses solar energy and filtration technology to purify polluted air. It provides a unique opportunity to explore residents’ willingness to pay for air quality and their related behaviors. Drawing on data collected after the establishment of the SFT, this paper reveals the characteristics of changes in people’s willingness to pay for clean air. We found that, prior to the release of an assessment report on the SFT, housing prices had an inverted U-shaped relationship with the distance to the SFT, which indicated people tended to purchase houses a certain distance away from the SFT. The threshold value of distance was inversely related to the greening ratio of the residential area. However, after the publication of the experimental report on the SFT, housing prices decreased as the distance to the SFT increased, indicating the closer the house was to the SFT, the more likely people were to buy it. These changes confirmed that people are willing to pay for clean air. The convenience of transportation had a significant moderating effect on the willingness to pay for clean air, however. In other words, people may buy houses with lower air quality if they have better transportation accessibility. The findings of this paper may have practical implications for environmental governance, urban planning, residential satisfaction, and real estate market regulation.