Measuring the economic benefits of recycling: the case of the waste agricultural film in Korea

Recently increase of the waste agricultural film (WAF) raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in Korea. The Korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage. The objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the WAF using contingent valuation method, aiming to provide policy-makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the WAF. The overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the WAF. The mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 Korean won (US$ 3.6) and 5730 Korean won (US$ 4.4), respectively. Total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14.33 billion Korean won (US$ 11.02 million) per year. This quantitative information can be used in cost-benefit analysis of the policy of recycling the WAF.