Impact of the First-Time Car Buyer Program on the Environmental Cost of Air Pollution in Bangkok

Attavanich, Witsanu (2017): Impact of the First-Time Car Buyer Program on the Environmental Cost of Air Pollution in Bangkok.

Abstract

Despite facing with the air pollution caused by traffic congestion ranked top ten in the world, the Thai government launched a tax refund policy for first time car buyers between 16 September 2011 and 31 December 2012 aiming to give an opportunity to low-to-middle income people to own their first car with discounted price and stimulate economic growth. Although past studies evaluated the impacts of the program on several aspects, the environment aspect has been ignored. The objective of this study is therefore to evaluate the impact of the first-time car buyer program on environmental cost of air pollution in Bangkok using hourly air pollution records from monitoring stations for five major pollutants and the happiness data. The article finds that the program increased the levels of air pollution. Using the estimated willingness to pay for a unit reduction of each pollutant, this study reveals that the value of total environmental cost generated from the program is approximately equal to $6.173 billion dollars annually.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: First-Time Car Buyer Program; Environmental Cost; Air Pollution; Bangkok; Subjective Well-Being; Interrupted Time Series; Program Evaluation
• Subjects: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q51 - Valuation of Environmental Effects; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q53 - Air Pollution ; Water Pollution ; Noise ; Hazardous Waste ; Solid Waste ; Recycling; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q58 - Government Policy

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