Willingness to pay for climate mitigation: Evidence from Latin America

The ability of countries in Latin America to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by mid-century, the target set by the Paris Agreement, will depend critically on citizen support. To gauge this support, we administered a contingent valuation survey to representative samples in six of the region's leading GHG emitting countries and in the United States, which is used as a comparator. The survey elicits respondents' willingness to pay (WTP) for achieving global net zero by 2050 and uses a split sample design to test whether WTP is affected by the distribution of decarbonization costs across households. The mean WTP estimate for the pooled sample of six Latin American study countries is on par both with our estimate for the United States, and with estimates from a recent CV study for China, Sweden, and the United States. Moreover, this mean exceeds these estimates when all are normalized by income. However, among the Latin American study countries, mean WTPs for Argentina and Brazil are relatively low. We also find that the distribution of the costs of decarbonization across households does not have a clear effect on WTP and that the drivers of WTP for our Latin American study countries are similar to those the literature has identified in other regions.

Duke Scholars

Author Marc A. Jeuland Sanford School of Public Policy