Conference Agenda

Air pollutants from power plants, industries and transport significantly threaten human health and the environment. To evaluate policies and programmes for sustainable development that improve air quality, it is important to quantify non-market benefits. Methods such as contingent valuation (CV) or choice experiment (CE), which rely on stated preferences (SP), are commonly used for this purpose. This review and meta-analysis explore the relationship between individuals' health status and their valuation of benefits from air quality improvement in SP studies. The study examines whether the methods used to assess health status affect the heterogeneity of preferences in valuing benefits experienced from reduced air pollution. Moreover, the review investigates the potential impact of the design of valuation studies on the relationship between health status and air quality valuation. The analysis of studies reveals that, in most cases, respondents' valuation of benefits either increases with reported poorer health or the impact of health status on valuation is insignificant. However, the way health status is assessed significantly influences the results. Studies based on medical diagnoses of diseases related to air pollution or on information about health symptoms caused by increased pollution levels more often show a positive relationship between poorer health status and higher valuation of benefits from better air quality compared with studies using general health status measures. A similar pattern is observed for health habits and general health status measures. Additionally, the design of CV and CE studies affects the statistical significance of the correlation between self-reported health status and air quality benefit valuation.