Yanping Li¹, Fei Lin¹, Yanyan Wu², Bingbing Pan¹, Guilian Lan¹, Si Fan¹, Zhaokang Yuan^1,, Yuanan Lu^{1, 2,}

Rapid economic development has brought many pollution problems such as air pollution in China, which also obstructed economic and social development. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among residents with different occupations in Nanchang and Wuyuan, China, from July to August 2015. Anonymous questionnaires were used to understand participant’s perception on current air pollution. Descriptive analysis was performed for the general demographic information of the participants and a chi-squared test was conducted to estimate the perception of participants towards air pollution. Binary logistic regression analysis was conducted for the association between socio-demographic and willingness to pay for the air pollution. The result of the chi-squared tests showed that the perception of different occupation groups toward local air quality was statically significantly different (χ2=731.166, p<0.05). This surveyed showed that over 90% of the participants from all the occupational groups considered improving air quality is essentially important and should be the responsibility of both the government and individual citizen. All the participants support the local government to place more funding on air quality improvement, but more than 50% of respondents are not willing to pay additional money for air pollution control (OR=11.025). This information will be useful to the local government in its process of funding preparation and the development of more effective and practical regulation to control air pollution in future.

air pollution, human health, occupations, willing to pay, environmental protection