Being the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters and economies,
both the United States and China must be involved to achieve meaningful global
action to address climate change. To better understand public support for climate
change mitigation policy in these countries, this study employs a double-bounded
dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey to estimate American and Chinese
citizens’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for climate change action. The results show that
on average, US college students and adults have similar WTP values. Chinese
adults’ WTP is about three-fifths of US adults’ WTP measured in US dollars, while
Chinese students’ WTP is only three-fourths of US students’ WTP. Adjusting for
the significant difference in per capita income, Chinese adult and student WTP is
over two times larger than that of their US counterparts. In addition, political
ideology for US respondents is found to have a significant influence on WTP even
when controlling for other covariates, such as environmental concern and climate
change belief