The public value of building large oil spill response vessels in Korea

As Korea imports most of the oil consumed in the country from abroad using oil supertankers, it is always at risk of offshore oil spill accidents. However, Korea has only small- and medium-sized oil spill response vessels (OSRVs), the size of which is less 2000 tons and has a difficulty in coping with large-scale oil spill accidents. The Korean government is considering the construction of two large OSRVs to enable prompt reduction of the pollution caused by large-scale oil spill accidents. This article aims to assess the public value of building these two large OSRVs. To this end, a survey of 1000 Korean people was conducted using the contingent valuation technique, eliciting Korean people's willingness to pay (WTP) for constructing the OSRVs. The mean yearly WTP for the construction is calculated to be KRW 3721 (USD 3.18) per household. When the sample is expanded to the whole country, it is worth KRW 71.8 billion (USD 61.3 million) per annum. Therefore, constructing the two large OSRVs will contribute to the Korean people's utility and can be done with public support.