Open AccessHaitians’ willingness to invest in rainwater infrastructure
Author(s) -
Mathurin François,
Marc Arthur Petit-Homme,
Eduardo Cohim,
Sílvio Roberto Magalhães Orrico,
Eduardo MarianoNeto
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
aqua
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1365-2087
pISSN - 0003-7214
DOI - 10.2166/aqua.2021.055
Subject(s) - rainwater harvesting , government (linguistics) , business , water infrastructure , bathing , value (mathematics) , consumption (sociology) , willingness to pay , clean water , water supply , economics , geography , environmental science , engineering , mathematics , environmental engineering , sociology , statistics , ecology , social science , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , biology , waste management , microeconomics
The use of rainwater is a reliable alternative for reducing clean water consumption and water bills. This study assessed the willingness of Haitians to invest in rainwater infrastructure (RWI). A questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions was used for this purpose. For closed-ended questions, ‘0’ and ‘1’ were used for negative and positive answers, respectively. Other numbers were used to encode the open-ended questions. The two-tailed Z-test was used to compare two proportions, where a result was statistically significant when the p-value was less than 0.05. Of 362 rainwater users, 81.2% used it for washing, bathing, cooking, flushing, and drinking. Approximately 73.4% of households with 1–3 people, compared with 84.0% of families with 4–6 people, used rainwater. Of all the respondents, 82.3% would invest in RWI if the government agreed to finance up to 50.0% of the project. More than 73.0% of respondents in each locality would invest in rainwater in RWI under the conditions previously mentioned. It is concluded that the implementation of RWI and decentralization of water systems would be welcomed by the rainwater users in Haiti, but the unwillingness of the Haitian government could be the main barrier to such a transition.