Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service

Transcription

1 METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS Meteorol. Appl. 23: (2016) Published online 7 December 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: /met.1539 Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service Huiling Yuan, a,b Min Sun c andyuanwang a * a Key Laboratory of Mesoscale Severe Weather/Ministry of Education and School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, China b Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change, Nanjing, China c Shanghai Central Meteorological Observatory, China Meteorological Administration, Shanghai, China ABSTRACT: The present study aims to understand the public opinion on the Chinese Public Weather Service and evaluate its benefits. Statistics based on a nationwide survey conducted in China in 2006 show that the receipt and perception of weather information vary across different ages and groups. People obtain weather information from various sources (television ranks first); younger generations favour new media. There is a high demand for information services related to severe weather and short-range weather, which have the largest impact on daily lives and professional needs. The respondents satisfaction with the current weather service and forecast accuracy are very high, although the accuracy of weather forecasts requires improvements. The benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service and cost benefit ratios are evaluated via direct, indirect and reverse willingness-to-pay evaluation models. For the entire country, the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service is estimated to be at least billion Chinese Yuan (CNY), which accounted for 0.22% of the Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006; the national cost benefit ratio is 1:26. The regional cost benefit ratios of the Chinese Public Weather Service exhibit a wide range from 1:2 to 1:81 over different provincial-level regions. The cost benefit ratios are much higher in economically developed areas (Central and East China) than in economically underdeveloped areas (Northwest China). The social development level, especially certain aspects of primary industry and transportation, is closely related to the cost benefit ratio of the Chinese Public Weather Service. These findings can assist the China Meteorological Administration and its supervised meteorological bureaus in providing a weather service that meets the public needs effectively. KEY WORDS Chinese Public Weather Service; willingness to pay; benefit assessment; cost benefit ratio Received 30 August 2014; Revised 28 July 2015; Accepted 29 July Introduction In China, the weather service can be divided into decisionmaking weather service, Public Weather Service and specialized weather service (Xu et al., 2009), and meteorological operational services are operated at five levels: national, regional, provincial, prefectural (city-level) and county levels ( Authorized by the State Council, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) supervises the overall meteorological work nationwide, while meteorological authorities at various levels (such as meteorological bureaus in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities) are responsible for the local meteorological work in their respective administrative regions. The present study primarily discusses the economic benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service, which is provided by the CMA and its supervised meteorological bureaus to individuals and families through various media outlets. However, assessing the socio-economic benefits of the Public Weather Services is considered a difficult task worldwide. Although researchers from the United States, England, France, Japan, the former Soviet Union and Hungary have analysed and assessed the socio-economic benefits of Public Weather Services from different perspectives, there remain no internationally acceptable analysis method and assessment model * Correspondence: Y. Wang, School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Avenue, Nanjing, , China. yuanhl@nju.edu.cn (UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1999; Ma et al., 2001; Luo and Li, 2009). The cost benefit ratio is often used to value the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a productive or non-productive activity. According to the assessment of the cost benefit ratios of the weather services (including decision-making weather services, Public Weather Services and specialized weather services) by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, 1994), the weather service in China has been much more profitable than those of other countries (cost benefit ratio of 1:40, see Table 1). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1999) reported that, considering the social and economic benefits that could accrue from the weather warning services in documented cases, the cost benefit ratios ranged from 1:55 to 1:127. UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (1999) also stated the following: 80 case studies presented in September 1997 at a WMO conference quantify the economic benefits of weather warnings. Experts estimate that the agricultural sector benefits from weather services at a cost ratio of about 15 to 1. China calculates the economic benefit to cost at 17 to 1. The effectiveness and value of weather forecasts have been studied in different geographical locations (Anaman et al., 1998; Freebairn and Zillman, 2002; Lazo and Chestnut, 2002). The basic Public Weather Service was evaluated as a consumption good by householders when evaluating the social and economic benefits of meteorological services in Australia (Anaman et al., 1998). Freebairn and Zillman (2002) mentioned that most national meteorological infrastructure services possess the non-rival properties of public goods, and there are four 2015 The Authors. Meteorological Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

2 Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service 133 Table 1. Assessment of cost benefit ratios for weather services in different countries (WMO, 1994). Country USA UK New Zealand Cost benefit ratio France Russia China 1:8 1:6 1:20 1:17 1:5 1:20 1:10 1:15 1:40 main methodologies (market prices, normative or prescriptive decision-making models, descriptive behavioural response studies and contingent valuation studies) appropriate for use in valuation studies. Because weather forecasts have some of the properties of public goods (non-rival and potentially non-excludable), and there is little or no market data available on households values for weather information, households values for improved weather forecasting services in nine cities across the United States were assessed using surveys (Lazo and Chestnut, 2002). The economic value of specialized weather services (e.g., seasonal climate forecasts for agriculture, long-term streamflow forecasts, El Niño forecasts and weather information services for shipping) and the economic losses of hazardous weather events (e.g., hurricane, tornado and flood) have also been evaluated (e.g., Costello et al., 1998; Craft, 1998; Hamlet et al., 2002; Meza et al., 2008; Emanuel et al., 2012; NWS, 2014). A nationwide survey in 2006 indicated that the United States public obtained 100 billion forecasts each year, which could generate $US31.5bn in benefits, compared with costs of $US5.1bn (Lazo et al., 2009). The method of willingness-to-pay has been used widely when valuing public goods and services (Breidert et al., 2006). Anaman and Lellyett (1996) calculated the average annual willingness to pay for weather services; their results indicated that it was approximately $A2 per month or $A24 per year. Using the willingness-to-pay model, Frei (2010) provided a rough estimation of $US54m $US362m of economic benefit generated by free-access information in Switzerland. Furthermore, Rollins and Shaykewich (2003) estimated that $C16.5m per year of benefit was generated by the weather service to commercial users in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Several researchers have investigated the national or regional socio-economic benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service. Song et al. (2007) quantitatively assessed the value using the willingness-to-pay method and concluded that the weather service provided a benefit of at least 53.5 billion Chinese Yuan (CNY, Chinese currency) in Huang (1996) estimated the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in Hubei Province and indicated that the value assessed by the willingness-to-pay approach was lesser than that assessed via the cost-saving approach. They also noted that the benefit assessment method of the weather service was very complicated, and the value was affected by many different aspects (such as the reliability of the samples, economic development levels and the appropriateness of the calculation methods). Li et al. (2007) estimated the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in Shandong Province using questionnaire data collected from July to August 2006; the value accounted for 0.2% of the province s gross domestic product (GDP). The benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in the Guangxi Province was assessed by the Guangxi Province Research Group (1995) using the three methods (willingness-to-pay, cost-saving and shadow-price) adopted by the CMA. The Guangxi Group modified these methods using the number of households to replace the number of people who have the capacity to pay and argued that an inflated value may result from repeated benefit statistics when using the shadow-price method. Following the three methods used by the Guangxi Group, Pu et al. (1997) studied the benefit of the weather service in Jiangsu Province.Wang et al. (2007) assessed the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in Anhui Province based on annual payments, annual cost savings and the number of telephone weather answering services; they also noted the shortcomings of their methods, such as the subjective non-market price of the willingness-to-pay approach and the lack of social and economic factors that can significantly influence the willingness of the public to pay. Nearly all of the above studies have been based on questionnaire surveys, which is one of the most common and important methods in applied social science research for directly acquiring information from many respondents. A nationwide questionnaire survey of the Chinese public was conducted by the CMA in These valuable data provide a good opportunity to study the Public Weather Service. Song et al. (2007) summarized and studied this survey data, although further investigation was warranted. For example, Song et al. (2007) used statistical population data from 2005, but their survey was conducted in 2006, and the relationships between the different survey questions were not discussed. In addition, they did not consider the spatial distribution of the cost benefit ratio and the factors that affect the cost benefit ratio. These valuable data, including where, how often and when people obtain weather forecast information across a range of contexts and how people perceive, use and value that information (see the Supporting Information), are analysed in the present study. The present study assesses how the weather service can be improved using all of these elements. Knowledge of the public understanding of and needs for weather forecasts is fundamental to the development of public weather services. Moreover, these research findings can assist in providing more beneficial weather services to meet such needs. Consequently, the public s access to and perception of weather forecasts, weather information from the Public Weather Service and the public s advice to the Chinese Public Weather Service are analysed in the present study. The results can help the CMA and its supervised meteorological bureaus improve their management efficiency and allocate internal resources rationally. The benefits of the Public Weather Service and cost benefit ratios are assessed for China and available provincial-level regions using the willingness-to-pay method, and the benefits of the Public Weather Service in different regions are also compared. In addition, the factors that affect the benefits of the Public Weather Service are quantitatively analysed in the present study. Section 2 provides a brief description of the data and the survey. In Section 3, the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service is quantitatively discussed. The conclusions and a summary are provided in Section Data and survey description In 2006, the CMA organized a nationwide questionnaire survey of the Chinese public and collected a large sample of data via the survey. Supporting information Part 1 and Part 4 provide more details regarding the data representation and a copy of the questionnaire, respectively. For the present study, valid questionnaires were examined. The survey was conducted in 2006, and the economic and population data from that year were used to make calculations and comparisons with the results from Song et al. (2007) using data from 2005.

3 134 H. Yuan et al. Understanding where, when and how often the public obtains weather information can assist a meteorological agency with collecting such information. To determine respondents sources of weather information, one survey question asked them to indicate the ways they obtain weather information from eight potential sources. The word obtain here means both active receipt (i.e., direct receipt of this information) and passive receipt (i.e., while engaging in other activities, e.g., when someone is watching television (TV) and the weather report comes on) of weather information. Because one person can obtain weather information from various media, the rating of each source was calculated as the number of respondents who chose that source divided by the total number of people in each age range who answered this question. TV was the most common source for all three age ranges (Figure 1). The TV rating (85.7%) for respondents younger than 15 years accounted for nearly 50% of all ratings from various media, indicating that TV is a dominant media source for most younger people. In addition to TV, people between the ages of 15 and 60 prefer new media that has rapidly developed in recent years, such as the Short Message Service (SMS) and the Internet. However, older people (over 60 years old) still obtain weather information via the radio and newspapers, which are considered traditional media sources. Interestingly, 0.7, 0.3 and 0.9% of the respondents from the three different age groups respectively (0 14 years old, years old and over 60 years) indicated that they are unable to obtain weather information, and an average of 0.39% of the population was unable to obtain weather information in this survey. In 2006, the total population (10 years and older, taken as those who can think independently in the present study) was million (National Bureau of Statistics, 2007a), and it was therefore estimated that 4.6 million Chinese people could not obtain weather information in It is estimated that 553 billion pieces of weather information are obtained by Chinese citizens (10 years and older) each year. The public is more concerned about the weather information that is closely related to their daily lives, work and studies. More detailed information is provided in the Supporting Information (Figure S3 and Table S1). Respondents were asked a multiple choice question to determine which aspects of the Chinese Public Weather Service were important to the public: What do you think the Public Weather Service should improve? Five options were given, and the results are shown in Figure 2. An overwhelming portion of respondents (80.98%) wanted the accuracy of weather forecasts to be improved, although the vast majority of respondents (83.9%) indicated that they thought the current weather information has high and medium accuracy (see Table S1 in the Supporting Information). All of the respondents were most concerned about severe weather conditions (see Figure S3 in the Supporting Information). In 2006, the warning time provided for the start of severe weather was 30 min, but 44.28% of the respondents wanted to obtain such warnings earlier. Approximately 43.25% of the respondents asked for an increase in the quantity of information provided by the weather services; they were not satisfied with the contents provided by the current weather services. Because of new technologies, people can obtain weather services everywhere and at any time through the Internet or SMS; only 28.2% of the respondents asked for an increase in the frequency of weather services. The high demand for information on severe weather was associated with public concern about high-impact weather events. This type of weather service needs to be expanded as the economy continues to develop. 3. Quantitative evaluation In economics, the willingness to pay is the maximum amount a person would be willing to pay, sacrifice or exchange to receive a good or to avoid something undesired, such as pollution. Several methods have been developed to measure consumers willingness to pay (Breidert et al., 2006). These methods can be differentiated by whether they measure consumers hypothetical or actual willingness to pay and whether they measure consumers willingness to pay directly or indirectly Willingness-to-pay evaluation models In the present study, three different willingness-to-pay evaluation models (indirect, direct and reverse) were used to assess quantitatively the total benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in The indirect willingness-to-pay model is an indirect way to obtain the public s willingness to pay by asking the following question: Assuming that you can acquire the weather information only by telephone (for the cost of the telephone call, which is 0.1 CNY each time), how many times would you call each day? The direct willingness-to-pay model is a direct way to obtain the public s willingness to pay by asking the following question: If you had to pay for weather forecasts, how much do you think is an appropriate annual fee? Finally, the reverse willingness-to-pay model is a reverse way to obtain the public s willingness to pay by asking the following question: Given your normal activities, how much money do you think you could save each year by using the weather service? All three models can be written into one formula: K J U = p j Δq jk (1) k=1 j=1 where k is the category of the public. In the present study, the public was divided into two categories (K = 2): urban residents and rural residents. The parameter j is the option category (J is the total number of multiple choices for the answers to the questions in the questionnaire); P j represents the midpoint value of the j th payment/saving category, which can be calculated as follows (Fan, 2004): Upper bound value + lower bound value Midpoint value = 2 (2) The calculation of the midpoint value in an open interval (without an upper or lower bound) is as follows: Midpoint value (without lower bound) = Upper bound value Adjacent interval value 2 Midpoint value (without upper bound) = Lower bound value Adjacent interval value + (4) 2 Here, Δq jk is the urban (k = 1) or rural (k = 2) number of people who correspond to each level of payment/saving. A benefit assessment of the Chinese Public Weather Service can be performed by substituting the data obtained from the questionnaire and the statistical data from the National Bureau of Statistics (2007a) into Equation (1). (3)

4 Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service 135 Figure 1. The rating distributions for the respondents sources of weather information in different age ranges after normalization (the horizontal co-ordinate ranges from 0 to 100%). The numbers on the bars are the ratings for the different sources, which were defined as the total number of respondents divided by the total number of people in each age range who answered this question (because one person can obtain weather information from various media, the percentages of each age range are added up to >100% and had to be normalized) % 80.98% 28.20% 44.28% 0.31% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Increase more contents of weather service Improve the accuracy of weather forecasts Increase the frequency of weather service Allow more people to obtain the severe weather warning timely Other Figure 2. Respondents advice to the Chinese Public Weather Service after normalization (the horizontal coordinate ranges from 0 to 100%). The numbers above the bars are the ratings for the different aspects of advice, which were defined as the total number of respondents divided by the total number of people who answered this question (because one person can choose more than one aspect, the percentages are added up to >100%) Cost benefit ratio assessment The weather service, which has no market price, is a public good. The three willingness-to-pay models used to assess the Chinese Public Weather Service result in the following values: U indirect = (billion CNY per year), U direct = (billion CNY per year) and U reverse = (billion CNY per year). In theory, these values are all less than the true benefit of the public s willingness to pay because the public is unwilling to pay psychologically. Freebairn and Zillman (2002) noted that if the public is accustomed to a free service, their willingness to pay for it is effectively zero. Thus, the respondents tended to be conservative and underestimated the value when answering the questions. In addition, U reverse > U indirect > U direct ; therefore, U reverse can be used to represent a conservative estimation of the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service. Thus, the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in 2006 was at least billion CNY. The total investment in meteorology by the Ministry of Finance was billion CNY in 2006 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2007b). According to Jiang (2006), the meteorological operating cost of the Chinese Public Weather Service accounts for 30 50% of total funding. The estimated cost of the Chinese Public Weather Service is billion CNY. The estimated cost benefit ratios range from 1:20 to 1:34. The average value (1.816 billion CNY) can be used as the average cost of the Chinese Public Weather Service in Therefore, the average cost benefit ratio of the Chinese Public Weather Service in 2006 was 1.816:46.482, which is 1: Spatial distribution A reliable sample of a population should be no less than one ten-thousandth of the total (Xu et al., 2009). Therefore, only the Chinese provincial-level administrative regions, including provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, with reliable questionnaires were assessed in the present study (shaded areas in the Supporting Information, Figure S4). The regional benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service were assessed in the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities (the spatial distribution is shown in Figure 3) where the questionnaire responses were reliable using the indirect, direct and reverse willingness-to-pay evaluation models. Using the total investment in meteorology in the different regions by the Ministry of Finance (Department of Finance in China Meteorological Administration, 2006), the annual costs of the Chinese Public Weather Service in these regions can be calculated, and the cost benefit ratios of the Chinese Public Weather Service can ultimately be obtained (see Table 2).

5 136 H. Yuan et al. Figure 3. Spatial distribution of the benefit (inside bars) of the Chinese Public Weather Service when the investment of the Ministry of Finance is one unit (shaded regions are major primary industry provinces with reliable questionnaire responses). Table 2. Benefits and cost benefit ratios for the Chinese Public Weather Service in different provincial-level regions. Region Indirect model (million CNY per year) Direct model (million CNY per year) Reverse model (million CNY per year) Benefit (million CNY per year) Cost (million CNY per year) Cost benefit ratio North China Beijing (indirect) :23 Tianjin (indirect) :24 Hebei (reverse) :46 Shanxi (reverse) :29 Inner Mongolia (reverse) :12 East China Shanghai (reverse) :37 Zhejiang (reverse) :48 Fujian (reverse) :36 Jiangxi (indirect) :32 Shandong (reverse) :81 Central China Henan (reverse) :73 Hubei (reverse) :45 Hunan (reverse) :72 South China Guangxi (reverse) :29 Southwest China Chongqing (reverse) :35 Guizhou (indirect) :36 Tibet (indirect) :2 Northwest China Gansu (indirect) :15 Qinghai (reverse) :3 Xinjiang (indirect) :6 CNY = Chinese Yuan. Hebei has the highest profitability in North China, with a cost benefit ratio of 1:46, which is twice that of Beijing and Tianjin. The lowest cost benefit ratio of 1:12 in Inner Mongolia is approximately half of the national average (1:26), which is close to the average for North China. Guangxi in South China has a cost benefit ratio that is close to the national average. The cost benefit ratios of the Chinese Public Weather Service in East China are all higher than the national average, and the highest cost benefit ratio, 1:81, is for Shandong Province. The cost benefit ratios in three provinces in Central China are much higher than the national average. The cost benefit ratios in Henan and Hunan Provinces are 1:73 and 1:72, respectively; these values are the next highest after that of Shandong

6 Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service 137 Table 3. Economic, primary industry, transportation and population development level of different provincial-level regions in Region Gross Regional Product (GRP, million CNY) GRP of primary industry (agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, million CNY) Passenger capacity (million people) Per capita GRP (CNY) Population density (persons per square kilometre) Shandong Henan Hunan Zhejiang Hebei Hubei Shanghai Fujian Guizhou Chongqing Jiangxi Shanxi Guangxi Tianjin Beijing Gansu Inner Mongolia Xinjiang Qinghai Tibet The provincial-level administrative regions are ranked according to the cost benefit ratio from high to low. The six largest values are highlighted in each column. Province. In Southwest China, the cost benefit ratios in both Chongqing Municipality and Guizhou are above the national average. The cost benefit ratio in Tibet is only 1:2, the lowest value in China. The cost benefit ratios are all below the national average ratio in Northwest China, which has the lowest average profitability among the six regions. For example, the cost benefit ratio is only 1:3 in Qinghai Province. The three provincial-level regions with the lowest cost benefit ratios (i.e., Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang) are all in West China. The spatial distribution of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service (for an investment of one unit) shows that the profitability is very high in East and Central China (Figure 3). This result is not only related to the level of regional economic development (gross regional product, GRP) but also linked with the aspects of the primary industry (agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery) and transportation in a specific region, which are sensitive to weather conditions (Table 3). There are seven major primary industry provinces (shaded regions in Figure 3) according to the GRPs of the primary industry. Shandong, Hunan and Henan are the three most profitable provinces based on the present study. It can be concluded that major primary industry provinces have high profitability (high benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service when the investment of the Ministry of Finance is one unit, close to or higher than the national average). The eastern, southern and east-central regions of China, such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and Bohai Bay, all had well-developed transportation systems in The passenger capacity can reflect the transportation development level to some extent. Table 3 shows that Zhejiang, Shandong, Henan and Hunan Provinces had a passenger capacity exceeding 1000 million people in The profitability of these areas was also very high. Correlation co-efficients were calculated to quantitatively determine the relationship between the benefit (benefit and the reciprocal of the cost benefit ratio) of the Chinese Public Weather Service and the variables listed in Table 3 (GRP of primary industry, passenger capacity, GRP, per capita GRP and population density). The number of samples is small, so the unbiased co-efficient was used instead of the co-efficient (Table 4). Three variables, i.e., the GRP of primary industry (PI), passenger capacity (PC) and GRP, have a significant relationship with the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service (at a 0.05 significance level). A multivariable linear regression analysis was also conducted, and the formulae shown below were used to calculate the benefit and the reciprocal of the cost benefit ratio, respectively: Benefit (million CNY each year) = PI (million CNY) PC (million people) GRP (million CNY) (5) 1 (cost-benefit ratio) = PI (million CNY) PC (million people) GRP (million CNY) (6) Both formulae passed the achieved significance test (at a 0.05 significance level). The t-test for each variable was also conducted (Table 5) in order to quantitatively identify the relative importance of each variable. The GRP of primary industry has the largest t-test value which means it is the most beneficial for the Chinese Public Weather Service. It is reasonable because agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery are more dependent on weather conditions. The above analysis shows that the intensification of economic and social development, especially in primary industry and transportation, is the critical factor influencing the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service.

7 138 H. Yuan et al. Table 4. Unbiased co-efficient between the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service and the economic, primary industry, transportation and population development level. Unbiased co-efficient GRP of primary industry (PI) Passenger capacity (PC) Gross Regional Product (GRP) Per capita GRP Population density Benefit * * * /(Cost benefit Ratio) * * * *0.05 significance level. t-test value Table 5. t-test value for each variable in formulae 5 and 6. GRP of primary industry (PI) Passenger capacity (PC) Gross Regional Product (GRP) Formula Formula Conclusions and summary The Chinese Public Weather Service is an important part of the infrastructure in most people s daily lives in China. The Chinese public (10 years and older) obtains an average of 553 billion pieces of weather information each year. The results show that people obtain weather information from a variety of sources and that people of different age ranges prefer different sources. Young people favour obtaining weather information from new media sources, such as Short Message Service (SMS) and the Internet. However, older people still prefer to obtain weather information from traditional media, such as the radio and newspapers. In general, television (TV) is the most popular media source among all the participants, suggesting that different media sources should provide weather information in various ways to attract a larger audience. The results also show that retirees care more about weather indexes related to life and health (see Part 2.2 in the Supporting Information). Therefore, radio and newspaper forecasts should focus on providing more details regarding the weather indexes related to life and health. Although the satisfaction with the current weather information and the opinion on forecast accuracy were very high for most respondents, the vast majority of respondents still asked for improvements in the accuracy of weather forecasts because the demands for weather information have dramatically changed with rapid economic development. People require more refined and accurate weather predictions than those provided via traditional weather services. The results also show that people with different occupations pay attention to different weather information due to their professional needs. In addition, respondents were most concerned about weather that could affect their daily lives or cause substantial economic losses or danger. Based on this survey, the benefit of the Chinese Public Weather Service in 2006 was at least billion Chinese Yuan (CNY); this value is considered to be a conservative estimate. This estimate accounts for 0.22% of the gross domestic product (GDP), which was trillion CNY in 2006, and is smaller than the estimate of 53.5 billion CNY calculated by Song et al. (2007). This difference can be partly explained by the removal of invalid questionnaires based on the content and purpose of the present study, which explains that the sample ( in total) used in the present study to calculate the benefit is different from the sample ( in total) used by Song et al. (2007). In addition, several modifications were made to the formulae and variables used in the willingness-to-pay models, and the present study used statistical data from 2006 because the survey was conducted in 2006, whereas Song et al. (2007) used 2005 data. The quantitative benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service were assessed separately in the 20 provincial-level regions with reliable questionnaire responses. The results show that profitability is high in economically developed Central and East China but low in Northwest China, where the economy is comparatively less well developed with a low population density. Profitability was related not only to the level of economic development but also to primary industry and transportation, which rely heavily on information provided by the weather service. Meanwhile, among benefit values estimated by three willingness-to-pay evaluation models, the value calculated by the direct model is much less than those calculated by the indirect and reverse models. When asking the public about their willingness to pay directly, which uses the reverse psychology method, the higher the annual payment is, the fewer is the number of people who are willing to pay, so the assessment of the benefit may shrink. The present study raises several issues for future research. First, comparing the current results with future survey results using the same question format will be of great value because the comparison will reflect temporal changes in public perception. Although the influences of unbalanced economic development in different regions and different ages on the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service were considered in the present study, the influences of income, education level and family size were not considered, and thus, these issues remain to be investigated. Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the China Meteorological Administration for providing the questionnaires and Dr. Pan Yinong at Nanjing University for guidance. The present study received support from the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2013CB430106), the R&D Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry (Meteorology) (GYHY ) and the Natural Science Foundation of China ( ). The authors also thank the High Performance Computing Center of Nanjing University for its support. Supporting information The following material is available as part of the online article: Appendix S1. Preliminary data analysis and a copy of the questionnaire. Figure S1. Population distribution of all the respondents occupation from questionnaire survey. Figure S2. Population distribution of all the respondents age from (a) questionnaire survey and (b) national census.

8 Assessment of the benefits of the Chinese Public Weather Service 139 Figure S3. Respondents (different occupations) rating of interest for different kinds of weather information. Figure S4. Spatial distribution of total population (red bar) and effective sample population (blue bar) in different Chinese provincial-level regions (questionnaires in red regions are reliable). Table S1. Relationship between the public s satisfaction of weather service and opinion of forecast accuracy. References Anaman KA, Lellyett SC Contingent valuation study of the public weather service in the Sydney Metropolitan area. Econ. Pap. 15(3): Anaman KA, Lellyett SC, Drake L, Leigh RJ, Henderson-Sellers A, Noar PF, et al Benefits of meteorological services: evidence from recent research in Australia. Meteorol. Appl. 5(2): Breidert C, Hahsler M, Reutterer T A review of methods for measuring willingness-to-pay. Innovat. 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