Willingness to carbon offset: value of malaysian air travellers’ experience, general and specific environmental knowledge

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector contribute significantly to global warming. Air transportation contributed 4% to 9% of total CO2 emissions in Malaysia. Several approach have been done by aviation industries in Malaysia to reduce carbon emissions from airlines, but still unsuccessful to implement carbon offset program. This study investigated experience, understanding of carbon offsets and the information passengers have concerning environmental issues and the ability to evaluate and understand impact on society and the environment among Malaysian airlines passengers. A descriptive statistics is reported as data collected from 407 Malaysian airlines passengers. The result shows only 1.5% of passengers experienced bought carbon offset schemes in past flight, more than 83% are knowledgeable with environment knowledge and more than 75.7% enlightened with understanding of carbon offsets. The finding obtained will help in providing insightful understanding about Malaysian airlines passengers’ acceptance on carbon offsets and willingness to contribute with carbon offsetting.

Stepping Up and Stepping Out of COVID-19: Malaysian Airline Passengers’ Travel Behaviour and Does It Impact Willingness to Pay for Carbon Offset

“…Although not every respondent is aware of the emission created by air transportation, they are still aware of their responsibility to reduce the emission to prevent global warming and climate change. This result is supported by [17][18] [19].…”

The Impact of COVID-19 on Malaysian Airline Passengers’ Willingness to Pay for Carbon Offset.

“…The calculated mean WTP ranged from RM15.00 to RM26.00 based on a 95% confidence interval, as shown in Table 3. As calculated, the value for mean willingness to pay among 150 respondents is RM20.68 which is considered a small amount compared to the previous study by Shaari et al, [12]. The research found that the value of WTP is much higher (RM86.00 among Malaysian airline passengers) and Fatihah & Rahim, [14] with offset value among Putrajaya residents is somewhat low, RM6.10 per person.…”

“…Double-bounded dichotomous choice represents the actual value of wiliness to pay. The bidding value for CV questions B1, B2, and B3 is decided based on adaptation from [12,14]. At the beginning of the CV questions, the researcher presents the scenario that happened when traveling by air transportation (how much emissions will be generated by their air travel, and the payment vehicle for cost offsets that will be charged to compensate for the emissions).…”

“…Even though International Civil Aviation Organization [11] reported as Malaysian demand for air transport decreased by 64% in 2020, it is expected to continue to increase since Malaysia has re-opened the border for visiting, and the demand for air transport may grow significantly. Thus, in Malaysia, only a few studies examined passengers' willingness to pay for carbon offset when purchasing airline tickets before the COVID-19 outbreak [12,13,14], and none of it was issued during and after a hit of COVID-19. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on Malaysia's airline passengers' willingness to pay for carbon offset during and after COVID-19 (endemic phase).…”

“…Therefore, the number of studies examining air travelers' willingness to pay to reduce or offset carbon emissions produced is limited [5], especially when the world is being hit by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Researchers found that most of the research on airlines' carbon offset is in Europe [15,16,17,18,19,20], and only a few in the Asian country, which is Taiwan [1] and Malaysia [12,13,14]. Besides, only a small number of research analyze the willingness to pay for a mandatory contribution.…”