How much are we willing to pay for silence?: a contingent valuation for Barcelona

Abstract

Barcelona has a compact urban model where both firms and residents exist together in a diverse urban fabric. Besides, the good design of public spaces and the Mediterranean weather facilitates the intensive use of open areas. Altogether it produces important sonic levels which affect not only public space comfort, but mainly it affects the residential private comfort. This paper reports a research carried out in order to assess the importance of noise, in terms of social economic value, for Barcelona’s citizens. For this reason a double contingent valuation study has been done, which aims are to investigate: 1) the relative importance of noise levels on household’s locative decisions, and 2) their willingness to pay (WTP) for a given noise reduction. Noise importance, as locative factor, is in 6th position in a group of 11 urban aspects related to accessibility, social stratification and environmental quality. 50.7% of total 405 respondents stated that noise is a relevant factor when deciding the location of their home, meanwhile 50.8% declared that are highly and severely annoyed for this externality. Nonetheless, when interviewed were asked to rank the agenda of city council, noise reduction is in 4th place for 5th proposed policies. WTP averages 3.39 euro/person/month, which is approximately equivalent to 0.28% of annual household income. The econometric analysis of WTP, using survey and GIS collected contextual data, suggest that behind respondent’s behavior are factors as noise annoyance, noise perception as a negative externality, income level and other environmental sensibilities. These results are coherent with theory and quite similar to other noise contingent studies.