Willingness to Pay for Climate Mitigation: Evidence from Latin America

The ability of countries in Latin America to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by mid-century, the target set by the Paris Agreement, will depend critically on citizen support. To gauge this support, we administered a contingent valuation survey to representative samples in seven of the regions leading GHG emitting countries and in the United States, which is used as a comparator. The survey elicits respondents willingness to pay (WTP) for achieving net zero by 2050 and uses a split sample design to test whether WTP is affected by the distribution of decarbonization costs across households. Our estimates of mean WTP in the Latin American study countries are on par both with our estimate for the United States, and with estimates from a recent CV study for China, Sweden, and the United States. However, among the Latin American study countries, mean WTPs for Argentina and Brazil are relatively low. We also find that the distribution of the costs of decarbonization across households does not have a clear effect on WTP and that the drivers of WTP for our Latin American study countries are similar to those the literature has identified in other regions.