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Cited by 97Economic and Environmental ValuationAir Quality and Health ImpactsEnvironmental and Air Quality Management

The health and visibility cost of air pollution: a comparison of estimation methods

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Delucchi, Mark A, Murphy, James J, McCubbin, Donald R·2002·Journal of Environmental Management
DOI 10.1006/jema.2001.0515
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Abstract

Air pollution from motor vehicles, electricity-generating plants, industry, and other sources can harm human health, injure crops and forests, damage building materials, and impair visibility. Economists sometimes analyze the social cost of these impacts, in order to illuminate tradeoffs, compare alternatives, and promote efficient use of scarce resource. In this paper, we compare estimates of the health and visibility costs of air pollution derived from a meta-hedonic price analysis, with an estimate of health costs derived from a damage-function analysis and an estimate of the visibility cost derived from contingent valuation. We find that the meta-hedonic price analysis produces an estimate of the health cost that lies at the low end of the range of damage-function estimates. This is consistent with hypotheses that on the one hand, hedonic price analysis does not capture all of the health costs of air pollution (because individuals may not be fully informed about all of the health effects), and that on the other hand, the value of mortality used in the high-end damage function estimates is too high. The analysis of the visibility cost of air pollution derived from a meta-hedonic price analysis produces an estimate that is essentially identical to an independent estimate based on contingent valuation. This close agreement lends some credence to the estimates. We then apply the meta hedonic-price model to estimate the visibility cost per kilogram of motor vehicle emissions.

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  • Hedonic pricing can help identify how much different consumers may be willing to pay for an environmental good or service, which is a noisy measure for the monetary value of that good or service; these values are typically inferred using regression or ML techniques on historical market data.

    “Hedonic pricing can also help identify how much different consumers may be willing to pay for a environmental good or a service, which is a noisy measure for the monetary value of that good or service; these values are typically inferred using regression or ML techniques on historical market data [175,594,613,629].”

    From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [175]

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  1. Chestnut, L. G. and Rowe, R. D. (1990a). Economic valuation of changes in visibility: a state of the science assessment for NAPAP. In Acid Deposition: State of Science and Technology, Report 27, Methods for Valuing Acidic Deposition and Pollution Effects. pp. 27-153 to 127-175. Washington, DC: National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program.
  2. Cropper, M. L. and Oates, W. E. (1992). Environmental economics: a survey. Journal of Economic Literature 30, 675-740.
  3. McCubbin, D. R. and Delucchi, M. A. (1999). The health costs of motor vehicle related air pollution. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy 33, 253-286.
  4. Murphy, J. J. and Delucchi, M. A. (1998). A review of the literature on the social cost of motor vehicle use. Journal of Transportation and Statistics 1, 15-42.
  5. US Environmental Protection Agency (1997). The Ben- efits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1970 to 1990. EPA 410-R-97-002. Washington, DC: US Environmen- tal Protection Agency, Office of Air and Radiation, and Office of Policy Analysis and Review. October.
  6. US Environmental Protection Agency (1999). The Ben- efits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1990 to 2010. EPA 410-R-99-001. Washington, DC: US Environmen- tal Protection Agency, Office of Air and Radiation, and Office of Policy Analysis and Review. November.

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Authors
Delucchi, M. A., Murphy, J. J., & McCubbin, D. R.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Davis (US)
  • University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Environmental Management
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2002-02
Volume
64
Issue
2
Pages
139-152
ISSN
0301-4797 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1006/jema.2001.0515
OpenAlex
W1582632716
Cited by
97
References
34
Citations by year
2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 6
FWCI
10.50
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Environmental Management (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • Institute of Transportation Studies
Funders
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
  • U.S. Department of Commerce
  • Pew Charitable Trusts
  • Battelle
  • Federal Highway Administration
  • University of California Transportation Center
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic and Environmental Valuation
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Air Quality and Health Impacts
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental and Air Quality Management
Keywords
air pollution, health care costs, visibility impairment, damage function, contingent valuation, vehicle emissions, social cost of pollution, estimation method comparison
MeSH terms
Air Pollutants, Vehicle Emissions, Costs and Cost Analysis, Environment, Humans, Public Health, Models, Econometric

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