An Investigation into Residents' Willingness to Pay for Vertical Greening in the Renovation of Existing Residential Areas for Greenhouse Gases Reduction- A Case Study of Hangzhou City

Abstract

There are numerous buildings in existing residential areas in Hangzhou City, which results in much carbon emissions and the formation of greenhouse gases that have exerted significant ad-verse impacts on the living comfort of citizens in Hangzhou City. It is imperative to conduct a greening renovation of buildings in existing residential areas in Hangzhou City. Vertical greening, as a significant measure of renovation, has received much attention. In this paper we use double-bounded discrete choice format to elicit public’s willingness to pay (WTP), and the economic benefits of vertical greening reduces greenhouse gases in Hangzhou City were preliminarily estimated, and the factors that affect residents' payment and participation. A total of 1089 valid samples were obtained via the face-to-face field interview. There were 250 (23.0%) respondents who refused to pay, whose data were subject to processing with Spike model, which had been proved to be more advantageous than traditional models in dealing with zero response problems. Families in Hangzhou City would pay 702.55 Chinese yuan (CNY) each year. The economic benefit of the project is 1.141–1.433 billion CNY. The factors affecting WTP were explored by demographic characteristics,social psychology༌knowledge of the environment and theory of planned behavior. The results showed that there were obvious statistical relationships between the age, income, family members, cognition of vertical greening and subjective norms of respondents and their WTP. Meanwhile, the feedback information was collected and analyzed, with the results showing that increasing income, setting up compensation mechanism, promoting the publicity of environmental protection, and disclosing the flow of funds would conduce to residents' participation in the renovation of vertical greening.