High returns, low adoption: Air purifiers in Bangladeshi firms
Despite delivering significant productivity and profit gains, air purifiers remain largely unadopted in Bangladeshi garment factories due to uncertainty about their return on investment. This brief describes how innovative low-risk contracts that allow firms to experience benefits firsthand significantly increase willingness to pay - highlighting a scalable, market-based solution to pollution-related productivity losses in developing economies.
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Garg-Jagnani-Policy-brief-July-2025.pdf
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- Air purifiers deliver 10% productivity gains and 18% profit increases in Bangladesh's garment factories—with payback in under three months during peak season—yet fewer than 1% of firms have adopted this technology.
- Traditional interventions (information, credit, warranties) failed, but low-risk purchase contracts enabling personalised learning increased willingness-to-pay by 20-30%, suggesting that firms need to experience returns firsthand to resolve uncertainty about the purifier's return on investment.
- With developing countries facing decades of hazardous air pollution, workplace air purifiers offer a pragmatic, market-based approach to sustaining economic growth—protecting worker productivity and firm profitability while regulatory solutions remain distant.