Willingness to pay for improved water service in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

The 1.5 million residents of the city of Manaus form the epicenter for economic activity and development in the Amazon Basin. The current water treatment facilities were built when there were a mere 100,000 people living here. The fifteen-fold increase in population has made access to water a major public health concern. Families that can afford to buy bottled water do and those that can not are susceptible to water-borne disease and illness at an ever-in creasing rate. In order to determine how much citizens are willing to pay for universal access to water service in the home, the University of Amazonas, Center for Environmental Sciences has conducted a survey of over 1600 residents, collecting information on current water needs, health concerns, household socioeconomic characteristics, and, from a contingent valuation (CV) experiment, how much they would pay for access to improve water service in the home. This paper makes use of the 1479 observations from four elicitation formats; (1) open-ended, (2) open-ended with a "pre-qualifying" statement, (3) descending bid dichotomous choice, and (4) ascending bid dichotomous choice. Results suggest that residents are willing to pay (WTP) more than R$12 (US$6.12) per month. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.