Public acceptance towards expanding hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks in South Korea: A monetary assessment based on willingness to pay

The government plans to increase the number of hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks (HTs) to 30,000 by 2040 reducing the number of internal combustion engine HTs in South Korea. The plan will abate CO₂ emissions in the mobility sector by 8.74 million tons. This study seeks to assess public acceptance of the plan by applying contingent valuation (CV) and collecting data on household willingness to pay (WTP). To this end, a sample of 1000 households was surveyed through one-on-one interviews by trained interviewers in 2024. A yearly household income tax was used as the payment vehicle. A spike model to reflect a WTP of 0 was applied to the data. The average annual WTP per household was obtained as KRW 3121 (USD 2.28) from 2024 to 2033, securing statistical significance. The national present value of it was worth KRW 572.4 billion (USD 418.4 million) when applying a social discount of 4.5 %. As of 2024, the present value of the national WTP and the carbon credit price were found to be KRW 65,465 (USD 47.85) and KRW 9245 (USD 6.76) per ton of CO₂, respectively. The former is much greater than the latter. Thus, the execution of the plan is socially profitable.