Valuing Air Quality Using Happiness Data: A Project Using the General Social Survey and Daily Monitoring Station Data from the EPA's Air Quality System

使用幸福数据评估空气质量：使用来自 EPA 空气质量系统的一般社会调查和日常监测站数据的项目

• 批准号: 0617839
• 负责人: Arik Levinson
• 金额: $ 13.65万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-15 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0617839&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Valuing; Air; Quality; Using; Happiness

This project develops and implements a new method for putting a monetary value on changes in environmental quality. It uses the General Social Survey (GSS) which has asked 38,000 people in various U.S. cities over 30 years whether they are "very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy," along with other demographic and attitude questions. These GSS data can be matched with the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality System (AQS) to find the level of pollution in those cities on the dates the survey questions were asked. People with higher income in any given year and city report higher levels of happiness. And, importantly for this project, people interviewed on days when air pollution was worse than the local annual average report lower levels of happiness. Combining these two concepts, it is possible using the GSS and AQS to estimate how much income is necessary to compensate people for any particular decline in air quality.This project combines two broad literatures: recent developments in economics and psychology studying happiness; and applied economics research valuing environmental quality. Happiness has been drawing increasing interest from economists, both for its theoretical foundations and practical applications. Theorists have focused on the implications of happiness being relative, rather than absolute, and whether it is transitory or permanent ("experience utility" versus "decision" utility). In practice economists have recently begun using happiness data to assess the social costs of issues such as unemployment, inflation, inequality, the Berlin Wall, and airport noise. This proposed research will extend this new tool to evaluate the social costs of air pollution.Broader Impacts: This project develops an entirely new methodology for estimating the social cost of air pollution (or, put differently, the benefits of public policies that reduce air pollution). The US Environmental Protection Agency uses a number of standard tools for measuring these costs. These include hedonic regressions (houses cost more in clean areas, all else equal); travel-cost models (people incur greater costs to get to more pristine recreation sites); and contingent valuation approaches (simply asking people whether they would be willing to pay for a specific improvement in environmental quality). Each of these has its drawbacks. The happiness approach proposed here has its own shortcomings, detailed in the project description that follows. It is, however, an important complement to and validation test of the standard approaches.

该项目开发并实施了一种对环境质量变化进行货币价值评估的新方法。它使用了综合社会调查 (GSS)，该调查在 30 年来对美国各个城市的 38,000 人进行了询问，询问他们是否“非常幸福、相当幸福或不太幸福”，以及其他人口统计和态度问题。 这些 GSS 数据可以与环境保护局的空气质量系统 (AQS) 相匹配，以找出这些城市在提出调查问题之日的污染水平。在任何特定年份和城市中，收入较高的人幸福感较高。而且，对于这个项目来说，重要的是，在空气污染比当地年平均水平更严重的日子里接受采访的人们表示幸福感较低。结合这两个概念，可以使用 GSS 和 AQS 来估计需要多少收入来补偿人们因空气质量的任何特定下降而需要的收入。该项目结合了两个广泛的文献：研究幸福感的经济学和心理学的最新发展；以及重视环境质量的应用经济学研究。幸福因其理论基础和实际应用而越来越受到经济学家的关注。理论家们关注的是幸福是相对的，而不是绝对的，以及幸福是短暂的还是永久的（“体验效用”与“决策效用”）。在实践中，经济学家最近开始使用幸福数据来评估失业、通货膨胀、不平等、柏林墙和机场噪音等问题的社会成本。这项拟议的研究将扩展这一新工具来评估空气污染的社会成本。更广泛的影响：该项目开发了一种全新的方法来估计空气污染的社会成本（或者换句话说，减少空气污染的公共政策的好处）。美国环境保护局使用许多标准工具来衡量这些成本。其中包括享乐回归（在其他条件相同的情况下，清洁区域的房屋成本更高）；旅行成本模型（人们为了前往更原始的娱乐场所而付出更高的成本）；和条件评估方法（简单地询问人们是否愿意为环境质量的具体改善付费）。其中每一个都有其缺点。这里提出的幸福方法有其自身的缺点，详细信息请参见下面的项目描述。然而，它是标准方法的重要补充和验证测试。