Public perceptions of climate change: A 'willingness to pay' assessment

In this paper, we examine for a sample of Los Angeles residents their willi ngness to pay to prevent significant climate change. We employ a fractional factorial design in which various climate change scenarios differing in wa ys consistent with existing variation in climate are presented to responden ts. These are contrasted to respondents' current climate before willingness to pay is elicited. Thus, the focus is on climate change as it may be expe rienced locally. We also try to determine the kinds of value that are drivi ng respondents' concerns. Among the key findings are that for these respond ents, climate change leading to warmer local temperatures is a greater worr y than climate change leading to colder local temperatures. In addition, cl imate change leading to less precipitation locally is of more concern that climate change leading to more precipitation locally. Finally, use value ma y be the most important kind of value, but a more cautious interpretation i s that respondents are not yet able to clearly distinguish between differen t climate change consequences.