Title: Willingness to pay for enhancing local emergency preparedness programmes: evidences from Canada

Authors: Ali Asgary; Seyed M. Mehdi Moeini; Nader Mehregan

Addresses: Disaster and Emergency Management Program, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, M3J 1P3, Ontario, Canada. ' Disaster and Emergency Management Program, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, M3J 1P3, Ontario, Canada. ' Department of Economics, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, I.R. of Iran

Abstract: While enhancing local emergency preparedness requires additional financial resources, local governments are under budget stress that prompts decision makers to seek people's preference to support and fund emergency preparedness programmes. The question addressed in this paper is whether or not the tax-paying households would be willing to pay additional money in the form of property taxes to enhance local emergency preparedness. A contingent valuation method was used to estimate willingness to pay for enhancing local emergency preparedness on a sample of residents drawn from 59 communities in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario (Canada). The results show that households are willing to pay an average of $52.43 to enhance emergency management programmes and that their willingness to pay is positively impacted by their knowledge, media exposure, and emergency experience and negatively impacted by their perceptions of local governments' emergency preparedness efforts and amount of self preparedness measures among others.

Keywords: local programmes; emergency preparedness programmes; WTP; willingness to pay; GTA; Greater Toronto Area; CVM; contingent valuation method; bidding games; Canada; programme enhancement; additional resources; financial resources; local government; budget stress; decision makers; popular preferences; tax-paying households; property taxes; budgets; funding; taxation; Ontario; positive impacts; personal knowledge; media exposure; emergency experiences; negative impacts; popular perceptions; self preparedness; disaster management; emergency management; emergencies; disasters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEM.2012.046020

International Journal of Emergency Management, 2012 Vol.8 No.2, pp.168 - 181

Received: 31 Mar 2011
Accepted: 20 Dec 2011
Published online: 27 Mar 2012 *

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