Assessing support for emissions reduction policy

Climate change and emissions reduction are recognized by the Australian Government as important issues. A variety of climate change impacts (e.g. loss of biodiversity) can be categorised as impacts that are difficult to assess using the current market system. Evaluation of community concerns about the consequences of climate change and their support of mitigation options is an important issue. Once the evaluation of community support is performed, the corresponding estimates can be used in the assessment of the feasibility of the environmental policy. The objective of this paper is to present the results from a pilot project testing the use of a non-market valuation technique (contingent valuation) to estimate willingness to support the emissions reduction policy in Australia.