Domestic Water Pricing with Household Surveys : A Study of Acceptability and Willingness to Pay in Chongqing, China

Wang, Hua ; Xie, Jian ; Li, Honglin

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER;    ALLOCATION OF WATER;    AVAILABILITY OF WATER;    CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURES;    CONTINGENT VALUATION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4690
RP-ID  :  WPS4690

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In determining domestic water prices,policy makers often need to use information about the demandside rather than only relying on information about thesupply side. Household surveys have frequently been employedto collect demand-side information. This paper presents amultiple bounded discrete choice household survey model. Itdiscusses how the model can be utilized to collect andanalyze information about the acceptability of differentwater prices by different types of households, as well ashouseholds' willingness to pay for water serviceimprovement. The results obtained from these surveys can bedirectly utilized in the development of water pricing andsubsidy policies. The paper also presents an empiricalmultiple bounded discrete choice study conducted inChongqing, China. In this case, domestic water servicequality was seriously inadequate, but financial resourceswere insufficient to improve service quality. With a surveyof about 1,500 households in five suburban districts inChongqing Municipality, this study shows that a significantincrease in the water price is feasible as long as thepoorest households can be properly subsidized and certainpublic awareness and accountability campaigns can beconducted to make the price increase more acceptable to thepublic. The analysis also indicates that the order in whichhypothetical prices are presented to respondentssystematically affects their answers, and should be takeninto account when designing survey instruments.