Sustainability and Willingness to Pay: A Review of Approaches in Urban Mobility and Climate Change Resilience

Willingness to pay (WTP) is widely used to inform sustainability-related policy and investment decisions, yet its application remains fragmented across research domains. In urban mobility, WTP is typically employed to value service quality improvements, technological adoption, and efficiency gains, while climate change resilience research primarily frames WTP around risk reduction, loss avoidance, and adaptation measures. These two domains are closely linked: transport systems contribute to environmental impacts and are highly vulnerable to climate disruption, so the value users place on mobility improvements depends on those services continuing to work when disruption occurs. Yet WTP studies in the two domains remain largely separate even though decarbonising transport and adapting it to climate risks both depend on public acceptance. This paper addresses this gap through a systematic literature review, which analyses how WTP is defined, measured, and applied, examining valuation logics, methodological approaches, valued attributes, and demographic and geographic coverage. The findings reveal heterogeneous conceptualisations of WTP, dominance of hypothetical valuation methods, and persistent gaps related to equity and cross-domain integration. By integrating these two bodies of research, this review develops a cross-domain taxonomy and proposes an analytical framework linking everyday mobility improvements with the maintenance and recovery of service benefits under climate disruption. The framework distinguishes review findings, interpretive implications, and recommended principles for integrated, equity-sensitive decision-making.