TITLE:
Welfare Perceptions of Public Expenditure on Environmental and Non-Environmental Goods
AUTHORS:
Qiyan Ong, Euston Quah
KEYWORDS:
Well-Being, Environmental Goods, Public Spending
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.4 No.6,
June
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: Increasing research
shows that income growth has a less than substantial impact on people’s
well-being. In contrast, environmental factors are found to have non-negligible
impact on people’s well-being. The research raises the question of whether more
can be done to improve the well-being of the public through government spending
on the environment. We conducted pair comparison surveys using the variance
stable rank method on preferences for public expenditure on education, environment
and transportation in Singapore. Both aggregate preference rankings as well as
rank ordered logitregression analysis on individuals’ rankings reveal that
respondents perceive larger improvements in well-being from increasing public
expenditure on environment goods compared to an equivalent increase in public
expenditure on education goods.