• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.147-175
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• 2006

This paper attempts to incorporate three important factors-perceptions, behavior and valuation-in analysing consumers' responses to health risks from environmental pollutants. Using a survey sample of 500 consumers in the Chonbuk province area, this paper empirically investigated determinants of risk perceptions from using tap water as drinking water. Most consumers were considerably concerned about health risks from drinking tap water. Moreover, those subjective concerns were not random, but were systematically related to individuals' demographic variables such as age, gender, and family size. Those subjective beliefs also influenced respondents' purchase intentions on safer water bottles, in response to a contingent behavior question of presenting two types of water bottles. The technical risk information provided in the survey had significant effects on purchase intentions only when it was interacted with respondents' actual averting practice. In addition, the sample selection effects were present by eliminating respondents who decided not to purchase either of two types of water bottles. The potential selection bias had impacts on the coefficients of the price difference variable, and subsequently the estimates of the price increments for health risk reductions.