Economic Valuation of Public Meteorological Information Services—A Case Study of Agricultural Producers in Taiwan
1
Division of Taiwan Economy, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, 75 Chang-Hsing Street, Taipei 10672, Taiwan
2
The Center for Green Economy, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, 75 Chang-Hsing Street, Taipei 10672, Taiwan
3
Department of Management, College of Business Administration, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Atmosphere 2019, 10(12), 753; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10120753
Received: 26 October 2019 / Revised: 17 November 2019 / Accepted: 25 November 2019 / Published: 28 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Impacts and Strategies for Mitigation and Adaptation in Agriculture)
Most meteorological information services in Taiwan are currently provided by the Central Weather Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications. As agricultural production activities are sensitive to weather and climate conditions, meteorological information services are more important for agricultural decision-makers than those in other sectors. This study uses the contingent valuation method to estimate the economic value of meteorological information services in Taiwan for agricultural producers. We assess the agricultural producers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the meteorological information services, conducting a national face-to-face survey of 400 registered farmers in 20 municipalities in Taiwan in 2013. The results show the adjusted WTP for every agricultural household each year with a 95% confidence interval which ranges from 56.06 US dollars to 90.92 US dollars. The inferred annual economic value of meteorological information services for agricultural producers in Taiwan is between 28.06 million US dollars and 45.51 million US dollars. Moreover, the agricultural producers’ subjective assessment of weather forecast accuracy, farm size, and first bid price significantly affect the amount agricultural producers are willing to pay for meteorological information services.
Keywords:
meteorological information services; agricultural producers; economic valuation; willingness to pay; contingent valuation method
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
MDPI and ACS Style
Lin, H.-I.; Liou, J.-L.; Hsu, S.-H. Economic Valuation of Public Meteorological Information Services—A Case Study of Agricultural Producers in Taiwan. Atmosphere 2019, 10, 753.
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