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Assessing preferences for wastewater treatment in a rural area using choice experiments
Author(s) -
Genius Margarita,
Menegaki Angeliki N.,
Tsagarakis Konstantinos P.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/2011wr010727
Subject(s) - willingness to pay , reuse , contingent valuation , valuation (finance) , irrigation , environmental economics , odor , agriculture , variance (accounting) , environmental science , water quality , environmental resource management , business , natural resource economics , water resource management , economics , geography , waste management , engineering , microeconomics , ecology , accounting , archaeology , finance , neuroscience , biology
In areas that are still not serviced by a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), economic valuation of the benefits derived from its construction should focus not only on those attributes that are linked to the services provided by the plant, such as cleaner environment and the possibility of reuse, but also on those attributes that are linked to its existence such as possible landscape and odor effects. This paper presents a choice modeling (CM) application that elicits the value of the attributes of a WWTP, where the latter are given by odor and landscape effects, jobs created, water quality, irrigation applications of the produced recycled water, and the additional charging. The results show that for rural populations such as farmers' communities, the potential increase of irrigated agricultural land is the main driver of willingness to pay while concerns over possible odor effects are also important. In addition, ignoring possible correlations across subsets of alternatives and variance heterogeneity would lead to substantial overestimation of willingness to pay.