Environmental Research Skewed by Funding Money

As with most endeavors that seek to change thinking to one agenda or the other, it boils down to who will pay the most to get the desired results. Bottom line for most poles or research results is they have been soiled by outside influences to such a degree we can't rely on them to provide accurate information at all times.

The age of new and free mass information has brought a wealth of skepticism upon truth tellers. It has also brought a new responsibility on all of us to take the time to look closer at our information sources before we make any definitive decisions about anything.

We have to believe that all aspects of mass information is biased in some way. To disregard this is to bring about bad decisions which will effect all aspects of our lives.


Evidence on the Value of Air Quality Improvements
Source: Douglas S. Noonan, "How Much Do We Care About the Air? Evidence on the Value of Air Quality Improvements," American Enterprise Institute, December 2011.

The impact of air quality improvements on individuals' well-being has been the subject of inquiry by many scholars over the past several decades. Hypotheses on the topic figure in discussions about the design and reform of air quality policies. However, these theories often rely on varying estimates of the value of air quality improvement, and this leads to drastically differing conclusions.

In assessing 50 separate empirical studies of air quality benefits (which measure the value of air quality improvement in terms of willingness-to-pay or WTP) enormous variations can be explained, says Douglas S. Noonan of the American Enterprise Institute.

Almost all studies concluded that the WTPperQ, the amount a person would be willing to pay for a 1 percent improvement in air quality, is significantly positive.
However, WTPperQ variation among studies was enormous: while 90 percent of the observations fall between $0.002 and $381.42, many studies still provided significant results over $1,000, while others still found negative results.

Within this framework and using the data provided, which yielded 142 observations, analyses were run to see what factors could explain variations within the data. WTP has a weak yet important correlation with income -- in developed countries, higher income is associated with higher WTP (each $1000 of more income increases WTPperQ by $4 on average).

Perplexingly, this same relationship is negative in developing countries, suggesting (without statistical significance), that the wealthier people in those nations are, the less likely they are to value air quality improvement highly.

As 75 percent of value estimates come from studies that acknowledged external financial support for the research, the effect of external funding is a key area to explore -- in this regard, it was found that more costly studies were more likely to report high estimates for WTP.
It remains crucial that lawmakers, in designing environmental policy, remain wary of estimated of the willingness-to-pay for air quality improvement.

High variability suggests that many reported values are unreliable or inaccurate.