Willigness to pay for water in the Trincomalee District

Abstract

In the past less attention has been paid to the equity and public goods aspects of willingness to pay for water. The pricing of water services are an important element of urban infrastructure. The absence of good water services can cause serious public health implications as well as substandard living conditions for the affected families. Presently for most of the infrastructure development projects of water supply, studies on willingness to pay by consumers are carried out. However most of these are not successfully completed and implemented. Being a developing country it is therefore important to find out the willingness to pay for public utilities in order to optimize the resource inputs without causing too much economic hardships. This research attempts to develop a questionnaire for WTP study, to develop equations to estimate the willingness to pay for water in the Trincomalee district. And also make recommendations to the NWSDB on conducting willingness to pay study for water by consumers. The questionnaire was developed after and extensive review of previous literatures available on this subject. Datas were collected through house hold visits to conduct the survey about willingness to pay for those receiving water through service connections, stand posts and wells respectively. Since willingness to pay by consumers is an important part of the economic feasibility of projects in water supply, this study has made recommendations such that NWS&DBcan plan and carryout WTP study accurately and easily.