title: Willingness to pay for safe drinking water: Evidence from Parral, Mexico.
abstract: A referendum-format contingent valuation (CV) survey is used to elicit household willingness to pay responses for safe and reliable drinking water in Parral, Mexico. Households currently adopt a variety of averting and private investment choices (e.g., bottled water consumption, home-based water treatment, and installation of water storage facilities) to adapt to the existing water supply system. These revealed behaviors indicate the latent demand for safer and more reliable water services, which is corroborated by the CV survey evidence. Validity findings include significant scope sensitivity in WTP for water services. Further, results indicate that households are willing to pay from 1.8% to 7.55% of reported household income above their current water bill for safe and reliable drinking water services, depending upon the assumptions about response uncertainty.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824, USA. wvasquez@mail.fairfield.edu
authors.forename: William F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Vásquez
authors.forename: Pallab
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mozumder
authors.forename: Jesús
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hernández-Arce
authors.forename: Robert P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Berrens
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection; D005382:Financing, Personal; D006801:Humans; D008800:Mexico; D014881:Water Supply / Q000191:economics*