Preferences of Vehicle Owners for Improved Emission Standards An Economic Evaluation

Abstract

Air quality in developing countries is being continuously deteriorated due to rapid urbanizationand growth in transport demand. The growing vehicle population together with the highcongestion has lead to serious air pollution problem in many urban areas. There were 5,120,797vehicles in the active fleet by the end of September 2013 in Sri Lanka and nearly 50% of thisbelongs to Western Province. Vehicle emissions are also linked to number of health effectsincluding respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The objective of the present study was toestimate the vehicle owner’s willingness to pay for improved emission standards.

Study was carried out during October to December in 2013 by randomly selecting six vehicleemission test centres from each district of Western Province, Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara.Pretested questionnaire was used to survey 500 randomly selected vehicle owners who came toget their vehicle emission testing certificate. The survey involved 56 Motor cars, 87 MotorTricycle, 267 Motor Cycles, 16 Buses, 36 Dual purpose vehicles and 38 Lorries which wasbased on the distribution of each vehicle type in the Western Province. The survey wasrestricted to the owners of the vehicles. The survey instrument mainly asked respondents abouttheir preferences for improving the existing vehicle emission standards and their willingness topay for any cost increases associated with such improvements.

According to the results, mean willingness to pay for all types of vehicle owners in WesternProvince is Rs 3773.70. The lowest value was stated by motor cycle owners while the highestwas stated by bus owners. Income of the vehicle owners was shown to be positively andsignificantly contributing towards the willingness to pay. Implications of the results towardsdesigning better standards for vehicle emissions are also discussed.