Valuing health risk reductions: a study of industrial community in J&K
International Journal of Development Research
Valuing health risk reductions: a study of industrial community in J&K
Received 03rd December, 2018; Received in revised form 08th January, 2019; Accepted 26th February, 2019; Published online 31st March, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Aijaz Abdullah. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Theoretically appropriate way of estimating the value of the benefits of risk reduction policies is to estimate the WTP for risk reduction by the affected population. This study attempts to estimate the wiliness to pay (WTP) for reducing the risk of chronic bronchitis using contingent valuation method and check whether magnitude of risk does have any impact on WTP estimates. The study was conducted in an industrial community affected by cement pollution in Khrew town of Jammu and Kashmir (India). The results reveal that WTP was statistically insignificant to the magnitude of risk reduction. The mean WTP was estimated to be Rs. 360 and the Value of Statistical Case of Chronic Bronchitis turns out to be Rs. 18040. The study provides WTP based estimates of Chronic Bronchitis for monetary valuation of environmental health policies.