Abstract:
The present study aimed to examine the relationship that exists between health status, political trust, economic cost, and willingness to pay for better ambient air quality as well as the indirect relationship mediated by environmental awareness. In this cross-sectional study, data were collected from the general public of Lahore, using a snowball sampling technique .we targeted the 385 respondents, and Information was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. Demographic analysis, Descriptive statistics, and correlation were performed using the SPSS. Smart PLS were utilized for confirmatory factor analysis afterward structural equation modeling was performed for testing the construct validity, discriminant validity, hypothesis testing, and path and mediation analysis. The results from path analysis showed that political trust and health status have a significant and larger effect on willingness to pay for better ambient air quality while the economic cost have a positive but smaller effect on WTP. After adding the interaction term, the relationship between the economic cost and willingness to pay is significantly mediated by environmental awareness (t = 2.631, p<0.05). Environmental awareness also mediates significantly the relationship between Health status and Willingness to pay (t = 4.112, p<0.05). Similarly the relationship between the political trust and willingness to pay is significantly mediated by environmental awareness (t=3.215, p<0.05). The study suggested that Government could raise WTP for better ambient air quality by raising political trust and environmental awareness through media and other communication channels and our results are also in support of this fact. Awareness creation will inform the public about the harmful impacts of air pollution and will encourage them to take preventive measures and induce them to reduce the pollutant emission. The government should also provide compensations to lessen the health effects that ultimately reduce the associated economic cost.
