Abstract:The meteorological service (MS) in Korea is provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), a governmental organization. This study attempts to measure the economic value of the national MS in the Korean household sector. Economic theory indicates that the economic value of a service is the area under the demand curve, which is the sum of the actual expenditure and the additional willingness to pay (WTP) for the service. The actual expenditure is well known, but the additional WTP is not. Thus, we assess the additional WTP for the national MS, conducting a contingent valuation survey of 1000 randomly selected households in Korea in 2014. We use a one-and-one-half-bound dichotomous choice question to derive the WTP responses and apply a spike model to deal with WTP responses of zero. The mean additional WTP per household is computed as KRW 860 (USD 0.75) per month and is statistically significant at the 1% level. Given that the monthly expenditure for the MS is KRW 1459 (USD 1.26) per household as of 2013, the economic value of the national MS is computed as KRW 2319 (USD 2.01) per household per month. Expanding the value to the national population gives us KRW 513.6 billion (USD 444.9 million) per year.

The South Korean government currently designates toluene as a hazardous chemical, only limiting its use in products that are feared to be harmful. Since no measures to prohibit the use of toluene have been implemented, toluene is frequently detected in amounts that exceed the limit. Accordingly, the Government is considering implementing a plan to tighten the current regulations related to the use of toluene to prevent the occurrence of diseases caused by exposure and addiction to it. Therefore, the most important objective of this research is to evaluate quantitatively the economic benefits arising from the implementation of the plan in South Korea. To achieve the purpose of this paper, contingent valuation, an economic technique for analyzing data collected from a survey of people based on economic theory, is applied. For this purpose, a survey of 1000 people nationwide is conducted, and an analysis model that is well received in the literature is adopted. In other words, the annual willingness to pay (WTP) per household to strengthen the regulations to reduce the human health risks of toluene is evaluated to calculate its economic benefits. All the estimated WTP models secure statistical significance. The average WTP per household per annum is derived as KRW 3394 (USD 3.02). Considering that the country contained 20,573,060 households in 2021, the national economic benefits are calculated as KRW 69.82 billion (USD 62.23 million) every year. It is difficult to estimate accurately the costs incurred by tightening the regulations on toluene use, but they do not seem to exceed the benefits. Because tightening the regulations would be socially desirable, the Government would be justified in making this decision.