Willingness to Pay for Water in Rural Areas: Methodological Approaches and an Application in Haiti

摘要

Rural water projects can only be sustained and replicated if beneficiaries are willing to pay for water services. A suitable methodology for estimating this willingness is the focus of the present study. A review of the planning experiences of A.I.D, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) shows that only the IDB systematically incorporates willingness-to-pay procedures into rural water project design. The report then describes a model for understanding household decisions regarding choice of water source and the amount of water used; emphasis is placed on assessing the advantages and disadvantages of two types of data used in estimating such a model - direct (interviews regarding willingness-to-pay) and indirect (data on actual water use). A final section reports on a field test of the direct data method (also called the contingent valuation method) in two Haitian villages. Results indicate the method's feasibility and value.