The willingness-to-pay for clean air: Experimental evidence from one of the most polluted cities in the world.

The webinar will discuss preliminary findings from a set of experiments that shed light on the demand for clean air in Delhi, as captured through individual decisions to acquire face masks. Specifically, we exploit random or quasi-random variation in a number of factors, including prices, ambient pollution levels, social norms, and a large government policy, to study the take-up of masks in a largely low-income, urban setting, and estimate the willingness-to-pay for clean air. Our data suggest that: (1) demand for clean air is extremely low in our setting, despite extraordinarily high levels of air pollution; and (2) a number of potential interventions, including providing better information about the health impacts of air pollution, do not meaningfully increase demand for clean air. We then discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on norms surrounding mask usage.