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Improved health through cool roofs: Understanding and enhancing the willingness to pay for innovative climate adaptation technologies in India

Picture Credit: Tristan Partridge

Project Description

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves (IPCC, 2021). In India, where high temperatures are accompanied by high humidity, heatwaves pose a significant threat to both physical and mental health (Burgess et al., 2017; Carleton, 2017; Fritz, 2025; Pailler and Tsaneva, 2018). Particularly affected are low-income urban neighborhoods, where residents have limited access to active cooling methods such as air conditioning or well-ventilated living spaces. As a result, the urban poor bear a disproportionate burden of heat-related health risks – from dehydration and heat exhaustion to increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases and heatstroke.

To address this challenge, scalable, cost-effective, and sustainable cooling solutions tailored to the needs of these populations are required. This study focuses on the potential of so-called “cool roofs”: roofs painted with a white, sunlight-reflective coating that have been shown to reduce indoor building temperatures by up to 4-5 °C (Kolokotroni et al., 2018). Cool roofs and the resulting cooler temperatures can therefore have positive health impacts without requiring ongoing financial or energy resources.

A central question in this context is how willing and able households in urban low-income neighborhoods are to pay for cool roof coatings and related services such as professional application. A better understanding of willingness to pay can help policymakers assess whether market-based scaling is feasible or if public subsidies are necessary. Building on this, the aim of this study is to investigate the potential for scaling up the cool roof technology in low-income urban neighborhoods in Ahmedabad. Specifically, the study aims at measuring households’ willingness to pay and to determine if and through which mechanisms this willingness can be increased.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Manuela Fritz
Collaborators: 

  • Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (Dr. Deepak Saxena, Dr. Anish Sinha, Dr. Sandul Yasobant)

  • Technical University of Munich (Dr. Manuela Fritz (PI), Prof. Dr. Janina Steinert)

  • Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (Dr. Aditi Bunker (PI), Prof. Dr. Till Bärnighausen, Dr. Dominik Jockers)

  • University of Passau (Prof. Dr. Michael Grimm)

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