POLYTECHNIC OF NAMIBIA
University of Science and Technology

School of Engineering
Department of Civil Engineering
ASSIGNMENT 3

Compiled by:

Petronella Buys

Student Number:

9763554

Presented to:

Mr. Andrea Vushe

Course name:

Water Utility Management

Course code:

WUM410S

Deadline:

7 October 2015

The Willingness to Pay Experiments: Estimating demand for piped water connections in Sri
Lanka. This paper shows how Willingness to Pay surveys can be used to gauge household demand for improved network water and sanitation services when a private sector transaction is considered. The survey included approximately 1800 households in the year of 2003. Using multivariate regression, it showed that a complex combination of factors drives demand for service improvements. While poverty and costs are found to be key determinants of demand, they also found that location, self-provision, and perceptions matters as well, and that sub-sets of these factors matter differently for sub-samples of the population.
The simulations show that in this particular environment in Sri Lanka, demand for piped water services is low, and that it is unlikely that under the present circumstances then, the goal of nearly universal piped water coverage was going to be achieved. Policy instruments, such as subsidization of connection fees, could be used to increase demand for piped water, but it is unclear whether the benefits of the use of such policies would outweigh the costs.
Contingent Valuation (CV) has been used increasingly in developing countries for improvements in water and sanitation services in the past decades. However, applying CV in developing countries requires careful adaption of the method to account for local conditions and cultural differences according to Whittington in 1998. Households can be asked to consider attributes of the service, including monthly user-charges and