The Willingness-to-pay for City-gas Safety Improvements

도시가스 안전성 제고(提高)에 대한 소비자 지불의사액 추정

This study used the contingent valuation method to determine how much consumers would be willing to pay to improve their city-gas safety and what factors influence consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP). To elicit this information a mail questionnaire was sent to a randomly selected sample of 2,400 residents who use the city-gas. The survey results showed that individuals were willing to pay $4,750{\pm}342.8$ won per month for the city-gas safety improvement. The aggregate annual WTP was estimated at 121.5~318.0 billion won. To better understand how individual's socio/demographic characteristics affect the WTP, Censored Tobit analysis was used. The results show that higher income, more gas use (cooking and heating), willingness to install a safety instrument significantly increase consumer's WTP.