Social Benefits of Environmental Information from Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Satellite (GEMS)

This paper is to measure ex ante economic values of environmental information arising from improved air quality monitoring and forecasting capabilities by enabling to use data products from GEMS as payload of a multi-purpose geostationary satellite, which Korean government is pursuing to develop. In addition, this paper is to empirically test the payment vehicle effects on individuals’ stated WTP. The two payment vehicles comprise a coercive charge with possible free-riding incentives (underbids) and a personalized fee with no free-riding. Empirical results, which are estimated using a survey data from 1,000 households, suggest that relevant attitudinal and demographic variables as well as economic variable had significant effects on WTP for environmental information. However, on the contrary to our expectation, the coefficient of personalized payment vehicle had significant negative sign without apparent payment vehicle bias. This implies that elicited WTP would be lower under a personalized fee than under a coercive charge. In fact, annual mean WTP of sub-sample with additional fee for text message service of cell phone ($1.93 to $2.01) counted only 40% of those of sub-group with additional charge as an objective tax ($5.14 to $5.48).