Attribute-Based Willingness to Pay for Improved Water Services: A Developing Country Application

Developing countries experience poor and deteriorating water services where the costs of improvements, water utilities assume, are not affordable by households. However, if water services are hypothetically improved, are households willing to pay? From employment of an attribute-based stated-preference method, the paper examines households' willingness to pay for improvements in water services in a city in south India. Aside of quantity, households are willing to pay for improvements in quality, pressure, frequency of supply, and increased quanta of supply during the dry season. In addition, households prefer regulation in water services, albeit from a public service provider. In Asian countries and other developing country regions households' willingness to pay is substantially higher than the costs of the provision of water, and on a par with mean water tariffs in developed regions of the world.