GENERAL PERCEPTIONS AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR SMART PUBLIC HOMES FROM HOMEOWNERS' PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Since the introduction of smart public homes to support a sustainable and aging city in Singapore, it has been gaining popularity with more new and retrofitting projects available in the market. With its limited scale of application locally, existing homeowners have yet to appreciate the constitutions and benefits. To garner on the perceptions and willingness to pay, 422 existing homeowners were surveyed. Recent studies have shown the association of perceptions and demographical factors with acceptability level. To exploit the true perceived value using willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA), a contingent valuation method was used. It was suggested that close to 79% of the respondents were uncertain about smart homes, with a higher acceptability level for the young, higher income and education group. Though it was evident that the perceived benefits such as financial aspects have an impact on acceptance, it revealed a lack of market knowledge on smart homes from the empirical study on the factors hindering acceptability and cost-benefit analysis. Despite lower pricing and creation of awareness could motivate higher rate of implementation and better knowledge, a WTP value of 1.46% and WTA value of 3.18% reflect that existing homeowners are unable to assign an accurate value to smart homes without adequate knowledge of the benefits and features. This study managed to highlight various insights of the disparity and it was found that the true perceived value was 2.32%.