Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The importance of being informed: Experimental evidence on demand for environmental quality

Contents:

Author Info

  • Jalan, Jyotsna
  • Somanathan, E.

Abstract

To what extent does information affect the demand for environmental quality? A randomly selected group of households in an Indian city were informed whether or not their drinking water had tested positive for fecal contamination using a simple, inexpensive test kit. Households initially not purifying their water and told that their drinking water was possibly contaminated, were 11 percentage points more likely to begin some form of home purification in the next eight weeks than households that received no information. They spent $7.24 (at PPP) more on purification than control households. By way of comparison, an additional year of schooling of the most educated male in the household is associated with a 3 percentage-point rise in the probability of initial purification, while a standard-deviation increase in the wealth index is associated with a 12 percentage-point rise in this probability and an $11.75 rise in expenditure. Initially purifying households that received a "no contamination" result did not react by reducing purification. These results suggest that estimates of the demand for environment quality that assume full information may significantly under-estimate it.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VBV-4PXDM7K-2/1/241bf9e256e03d74d714884e4c4d6eb3
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Development Economics.

Volume (Year): 87 (2008)
Issue (Month): 1 (August)
Pages: 14-28

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:87:y:2008:i:1:p:14-28

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/devec

Related research

Keywords:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Simone Borghesi, 1999. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: a Survey of the Literature," Working Papers 1999.85, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
  2. Dasgupta, Purnamita, 2004. "Valuing health damages from water pollution in urban Delhi, India: a health production function approach," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(01), pages 83-106, February.
  3. Jyotsna Jalan & E.Somanathan & Saraswata Chaudhuri, 2003. "Awareness and the demand for environmental quality: Drinking water in urban India," Indian Statistical Institute, Planning Unit, New Delhi Discussion Papers 03-05, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India.
  4. Madajewicz, Malgosia & Pfaff, Alexander & van Geen, Alexander & Graziano, Joseph & Hussein, Iftikhar & Momotaj, Hasina & Sylvi, Roksana & Ahsan, Habibul, 2007. "Can information alone change behavior? Response to arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 731-754, November.
  5. Bresnahan, B.W. & Dickie, M. & Gerking, S.D., 1997. "Averting behavior and urban air pollution," Open Access publications from Tilburg University urn:nbn:nl:ui:12-4628502, Tilburg University.
  6. Charles W. Abdalla & Brian A. Roach & Donald J. Epp, 1992. "Valuing Environmental Quality Changes Using Averting Expenditures: An Application to Groundwater Contamination," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 68(2), pages 163-169.
  7. Smith, V Kerry & Desvousges, William H & Payne, John W, 1995. "Do Risk Information Programs Promote Mitigating Behavior?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 203-21, May.
  8. Harrington, Winston & Krupnick, Alan J. & Spofford, Walter Jr., 1989. "The economic losses of a waterborne disease outbreak," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 116-137, January.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Das, Jishnu & Hammer, Jeffrey & Sanchez-Paramo, Carolina, 2011. "The impact of recall periods on reported morbidity and health seeking behavior," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5778, The World Bank.
  2. Fink, Günther & McConnell, Margaret & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2011. "Testing for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Experimental Data: False Discovery Risks and Correction Procedures," Diskussionspapiere der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Leibniz Universität Hannover dp-477, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
  3. E. Somanathan, 2010. "Effects of information on environmental quality in developing countries," Indian Statistical Institute, Planning Unit, New Delhi Discussion Papers 10-04, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India.
  4. Sheila M. Olmstead, 2010. "The Economics of Water Quality," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(1), pages 44-62, Winter.
  5. repec:hal:journl:halshs-00492178 is not listed on IDEAS
  6. Seo, Misuk & Pape, Andreas Duus, 2011. "Reports of Water Quality Violations induce Consumers to buy Bottled Water," MPRA Paper 28207, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  7. Bennear, Lori S. & Olmstead, Sheila M., 2008. "The impacts of the "right to know": Information disclosure and the violation of drinking water standards," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 117-130, September.
  8. Subhrendu K Pattanayak, 2009. "Rough Guide to Impact Evaluation of Environmental and Development Programs," Working Papers id:2187, eSocialSciences.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:87:y:2008:i:1:p:14-28

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.