IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/envpol/v23y2021i4d10.1007_s10018-021-00303-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Willingness to pay for reliable piped water services: evidence from urban Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Amoah

    (University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD))

  • Peter G. Moffatt

    (University of East Anglia)

Abstract

The primary objective of this research is to estimate the willingness to pay in Ghana for reliable piped water services. Three competing economic valuation approaches are used to do this: the contingent valuation method (CVM), the hedonic pricing method (HPM) and the travel cost method (TCM). These methods allow for easy robustness tests of the estimates and serves as an improvement on previous research. Using survey data from a sample of 1,650 urban households, we obtain estimates of the willingness of households to pay every month for urban piped water services of: GHS 47.80 or US$15.25 (CVM), GHS 44.73 or US$14.27 (HPM) and GHS 22.72 or US$725 (TCM). Such sums account for 3–8% of household income. These empirical calculations are then used to inform policy choices by determining the economic viability of the participation of the private sector in the water sector in Ghana.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Amoah & Peter G. Moffatt, 2021. "Willingness to pay for reliable piped water services: evidence from urban Ghana," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(4), pages 805-829, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:envpol:v:23:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s10018-021-00303-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s10018-021-00303-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10018-021-00303-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10018-021-00303-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Choumert, Johanna & Stage, Jesper & Uwera, Claudine, 2014. "Access to water as determinant of rental values: A housing hedonic analysis in Rwanda," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 48-54.
    2. Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & van den Berg, Caroline & Yang, Jui-Chen & Van Houtven, George, 2006. "The use of willingness to pay experiments : estimating demand for piped water connections in Sri Lanka," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3818, The World Bank.
    3. Jasper M. Dalhuisen & Raymond J. G. M. Florax & JHenri L. F. de Groot & Peter Nijkamp, 2003. "Price and Income Elasticities of Residential Water Demand: A Meta-Analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 79(2), pages 292-308.
    4. James Berry & Greg Fischer & Raymond Guiteras, 2020. "Eliciting and Utilizing Willingness to Pay: Evidence from Field Trials in Northern Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1436-1473.
    5. Mikołaj Czajkowski & Marek Giergiczny & Jakub Kronenberg & Jeffrey Englin, 2019. "The Individual Travel Cost Method with Consumer-Specific Values of Travel Time Savings," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(3), pages 961-984, November.
    6. Whittington, Dale & Lauria, Donald T. & Mu, Xinming, 1991. "A study of water vending and willingness to pay for water in Onitsha, Nigeria," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 179-198.
    7. Jimenez, Emmanuel, 1982. "The Value of Squatter Dwellings in Developing Countries," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(4), pages 739-752, July.
    8. Céline Nauges & Caroline Berg, 2009. "Demand for Piped and Non-piped Water Supply Services: Evidence from Southwest Sri Lanka," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 42(4), pages 535-549, April.
    9. Kling, Catherine L. & Bockstael, Nancy & Hanemann, W. Michael, 1987. "Estimating the Value of Water Quality Improvements in a Recreational Demand Framework," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1594, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Rainer Winkelmann, 2008. "Econometric Analysis of Count Data," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-3-540-78389-3, November.
    11. Johanna CHOUMERT & Jesper STAGE & Claudine UWERA, 2014. "Access to water as a determinant of rental values: A hedonic analysis in Rwanda," Working Papers 201401, CERDI.
    12. Whittington, Dale & Briscoe, John & Mu, Xinming & Barron, William, 1990. "Estimating the Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Developing Countries: A Case Study of the Use of Contingent Valuation Surveys in Southern Haiti," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 293-311, January.
    13. Cummings, R. & Schulze, W. & Gerking, S. & Brookshire, D., 1986. "Measuring the elasticity of substitution of wages for municipal infrastructure: A comparison of the survey and wage hedonic approaches," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 269-276, September.
    14. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    15. Richard T. Carson & Nicholas E. Flores & Kerry M. Martin & Jennifer L. Wright, 1996. "Contingent Valuation and Revealed Preference Methodologies: Comparing the Estimates for Quasi-Public Goods," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(1), pages 80-99.
    16. Cameron, Trudy Ann & Englin, Jeffrey, 1997. "Respondent Experience and Contingent Valuation of Environmental Goods," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 296-313, July.
    17. Quigley, John M., 1982. "Nonlinear budget constraints and consumer demand: An application to public programs for residential housing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 177-201, September.
    18. Anselin, Luc & Lozano-Gracia, Nancy & Deichmann, Uwe & Lall, Somik, 2008. "Valuing access to water - a spatial hedonic approach applied to Indian cities," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4533, The World Bank.
    19. Guy Garrod & Kenneth G. Willis, 1999. "Economic Valuation of the Environment," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1368.
    20. Caroline Berg & Céline Nauges, 2012. "The willingness to pay for access to piped water: a hedonic analysis of house prices in Southwest Sri Lanka," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 151-166, October.
    21. Michael D. Creel & John B. Loomis, 1990. "Theoretical and Empirical Advantages of Truncated Count Data Estimators for Analysis of Deer Hunting in California," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 72(2), pages 434-441.
    22. Anthony Amoah & Thomas Addoah, 2021. "Does environmental knowledge drive pro-environmental behaviour in developing countries? Evidence from households in Ghana," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 2719-2738, February.
    23. F. O. Boadu, 1992. "Contingent Valuation For Household Water In Rural Ghana," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 458-465, September.
    24. Dale Whittington & Stefano Pagiola, 2012. "Using Contingent Valuation in the Design of Payments for Environmental Services Mechanisms: A Review and Assessment," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 27(2), pages 261-287, August.
    25. KyeongAe Choe & Dale Whittington & Donald T. Lauria, 1996. "The Economic Benefits of Surface Water Quality Improvements in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Davao, Philippines," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(4), pages 519-537.
    26. Brown, Gardner M, Jr & Mendelsohn, Robert, 1984. "The Hedonic Travel Cost Method," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(3), pages 427-433, August.
    27. Brookshire, David S & Thayer. Mark A & Tschirhart, John & Schulze, William D, 1985. "A Test of the Expected Utility Model: Evidence from Earthquake Risks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 369-389, April.
    28. Brian E. Roe & David R. Just, 2009. "Internal and External Validity in Economics Research: Tradeoffs between Experiments, Field Experiments, Natural Experiments, and Field Data," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1266-1271.
    29. Manuel Gottlieb, 1963. "Urban Domestic Demand for Water: A Kansas Case Study," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2), pages 204-210.
    30. Bishop, Richard C. & Heberlein, Thomas A., 1979. "Measuring Values Of Extramarket Goods: Are Indirect Measures Biased?," 1979 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, Pullman, Washington 277818, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    31. Amoah, Anthony & Ferrini, Silvia & Schaafsma, Marije, 2019. "Electricity outages in Ghana: Are contingent valuation estimates valid?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    32. Briscoe, John, et al, 1990. "Toward Equitable and Sustainable Rural Water Supplies: A Contingent Valuation Study in Brazil," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 4(2), pages 115-134, May.
    33. Gulyani, Sumila & Talukdar, Debabrata, 2008. "Slum Real Estate: The Low-Quality High-Price Puzzle in Nairobi's Slum Rental Market and its Implications for Theory and Practice," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1916-1937, October.
    34. Richard C. Bishop & Thomas A. Heberlein, 1979. "Measuring Values of Extramarket Goods: Are Indirect Measures Biased?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 61(5), pages 926-930.
    35. Douglas J. MacNair & William H. Desvousges, 2007. "The Economics of Fish Consumption Advisories: Insights from Revealed and Stated Preference Data," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 83(4), pages 600-616.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Francisco B. Galarza & Max Carbajal & Julio Aguirre, 2022. "Willingness to Pay for Improved Water Service: Evidence from Urban Peru," Working Papers 185, Peruvian Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anthony Amoah & Peter G. Moffatt, 2017. "Estimating demand for reliable piped-water services in urban Ghana: An application of competing valuation approaches," University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series 2017-01, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    2. Eric Nazindigouba KERE & Johanna CHOUMERT & Amandine Loyal LARÉ-DONDARINI, 2014. "The impact of water and sanitation access on housing values: The case of Dapaong, Togo," Working Papers 201403, CERDI.
    3. Deutschmann, Joshua W. & Postepska, Agnieszka & Sarr, Leopold, 2021. "Measuring willingness to pay for reliable electricity: Evidence from Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    4. Estebania Teyeliz Martínez-Jiménez & Julie Le Gallo & Enrique Pérez-Campuzano & Alonso Aguilar Ibarra, 2022. "The effects of land price in the peri-urban fringe of Mexico City: Environmental amenities for informal land parcel purchasers," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(1), pages 222-241, January.
    5. Céline Nauges & Dale Whittington, 2010. "Estimation of Water Demand in Developing Countries: An Overview," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 25(2), pages 263-294, August.
    6. Mvangeli Dlamini, Nqobizwe, 2015. "Households' Water Use Demand and Willingness to Pay for Improved Water Services: A Case Study of Semi-Urban Areas in the Lubombo and Lowveld Regions of Swaziland," Research Theses 243464, Collaborative Masters Program in Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    7. W. Michael Hanemann, 1994. "Valuing the Environment through Contingent Valuation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 19-43, Fall.
    8. Cropper, Maureen L & Oates, Wallace E, 1992. "Environmental Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 675-740, June.
    9. Bhattacharyya, Aditi & Kutlu, Levent & Sickles, Robin C., 2018. "Pricing Inputs and Outputs: Market prices versus shadow prices, market power, and welfare analysis," Working Papers 18-009, Rice University, Department of Economics.
    10. 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.
    11. Van Houtven, George L. & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Usmani, Faraz & Yang, Jui-Chen, 2017. "What are Households Willing to Pay for Improved Water Access? Results from a Meta-Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 126-135.
    12. Caroline Berg & Céline Nauges, 2012. "The willingness to pay for access to piped water: a hedonic analysis of house prices in Southwest Sri Lanka," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 151-166, October.
    13. Johanna Choumert & N. Eric Kéré & Amandine Loyal Laré-Dondarini, 2016. "A Multi-Level Housing Hedonic Analysis of Water and Sanitation Access," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(2), pages 1010-1037.
    14. Marcial Echenique & Raghavendra Seshagiri, 2009. "Attribute-Based Willingness to Pay for Improved Water Services: A Developing Country Application," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 36(3), pages 384-397, June.
    15. Gonzalez, Juan Marcos & Loomis, John B. & Gonzalez-Caban, Armando, 2006. "Testing Welfare Measurement Gains of Combining Stated and Revealed Preferences Methods Using Count Data Models," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21203, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Ojeda, Monica Ilija & Mayer, Alex S. & Solomon, Barry D., 2008. "Economic valuation of environmental services sustained by water flows in the Yaqui River Delta," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 155-166, March.
    17. Moreno-Sanchez, Rocio & Maldonado, Jorge Higinio & Wunder, Sven & Borda-Almanza, Carlos, 2012. "Heterogeneous users and willingness to pay in an ongoing payment for watershed protection initiative in the Colombian Andes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 126-134.
    18. Hervani, Aref Agahei & Sarkis, Joseph & Helms, Marilyn M., 2017. "Environmental goods valuations for social sustainability: A conceptual framework," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 137-153.
    19. Basu, Amita & Srinivasan, Narayanan, 2021. "A Modified Contingent Valuation Method Shrinks Gain-Loss Asymmetry," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    20. Chin-Huang Huang & Chiung-Hsia Wang, 2015. "Estimating the Total Economic Value of Cultivated Flower Land in Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:envpol:v:23:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s10018-021-00303-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.