The fast pace of economic development has led to a drastic increase in air pollution in Jakarta, with an Air Quality Index (AQI) rivalling New Delhi and Beijing. Current research estimates that if Jakarta’s air quality remains at the current level, its residents will lose 5.5 years of their lifespan on average.
While good air quality is vital to health and productivity, it is often neglected and undervalued. More research is desperately needed to understand the sources and consequences of air pollution in Jakarta, how the residents view the problem, and effective actions to improve the current situation.
This study has two main goals.
- Measure people’s knowledge of air pollution. This is important because misinformation can prevent people from taking defensive actions against environmental harms.
- Test to what extent information on and experience of clean air influence peoples’ demand for it. One of the consequences of the increasingly severe pollution in Jakarta is the large number of people who have not enjoyed clean air for years. We can imagine how hard it is for people to understand the benefits of clean air without physically experiencing it.
In the first phase of the project, a small pilot program, Clean Air Zones (CAZ), will be used to gather qualitative and quantitative evidence on conditions under which people physically perceive changes in the surrounding air quality.
