WSU research shows consumers willing to pay 11% premium for biofuels

In Washington state, Washington State University research shows that consumers are willing to pay a premium of approximately 11 percent over conventional fuel.

“We were surprised the premium was that significant,” said Jill McCluskey, WSU professor in the School of Economic Sciences. “We wanted to study people in different regions of the country, to make sure we weren’t just getting a local result, and people in all three cities we studied said they would pay more for these fuels.”

The paper, “Consumer Preferences for Second-Generation Bioethanol,” was published in November in the journal Energy Economics. See http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988316303048.