The Role of Indoor Air Quality in Willingness to Pay for Short-Term Rentals in China: Health and Comfort Perceptions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70088/8d54bh76Keywords:
Indoor air quality, short term rental, rental housesAbstract
China's short-term rental market for two- to three-month lets is expanding faster than housing research has tracked. Existing indoor air quality (IAQ) studies, however, mostly focus on long-term residences or offices and do not capture the immediate decision logic of short-let tenants.Using a sample of 111 respondents in China, this study develops a framework in which IAQ salience influences willingness to rent (WTR) through perceived benefits measured by health benefit perception (HBP) and living comfort perception (LCP), and WTR in turn affects willingness to pay (WTP). It combines PLS-SEM with a panel mixed logit model based on five paired comparison choice tasks. The choice model, which separately estimates MWTP for specific IAQ attributes: air quality, odor, and ventilation, estimates marginal willingness to pay at 275 yuan/month for excellent air quality, 240 yuan/month for avoiding a mild odor, and 155 yuan/month for mechanical ventilation. The study concludes that short-term tenants mainly pay for IAQ through perceived health and comfort benefits, and that odor avoidance is almost as valuable as excellent air quality. Landlords and policymakers should therefore focus on actual air experience rather than ventilation equipment alone. Limitations include a small, self-reported, single-wave, China-only sample.References
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