Department of Economics, Management, and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
CSIL-Centre for Industrial Studies, Corso Monforte, Milan, Italy.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 11;15(3):e0229885. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229885. eCollection 2020.
Investment in basic science is mainly supported by government funding, but little is known about citizens' willingness to pay for large-scale projects. A survey to a representative sample of French taxpayers, designed as a contingent valuation experiment about a future particle accelerator for CERN, reveals that citizens' willingness to pay is correlated with education, income, age, and-crucially-previous awareness, attitudes and interest in science. A (slim) majority of the participants would accept paying more in taxes for CERN. The estimated willingness to pay is higher than the current implicit per capita tax burden of French citizens. The experimental setting is novel and replicable for empirically assessing social attitudes towards science for other research infrastructures and countries.
对基础科学的投资主要由政府资金支持，但对于公众对大型项目的付费意愿却知之甚少。一项针对法国纳税人的代表性样本的调查，旨在作为对未来 CERN 粒子加速器的条件价值评估实验，揭示了公民的付费意愿与教育程度、收入、年龄以及——至关重要的是——之前对科学的认识、态度和兴趣相关。大多数参与者（虽然人数较少）愿意为 CERN 缴纳更多税款。估计的支付意愿高于当前法国公民的人均隐性税收负担。这种实验设置新颖且可复制，可用于评估其他研究基础设施和国家的社会对科学的态度。
